TABLE TKAITS 



» 



^y 



SOMETHING ON THEM 



BY DE. DORAK 

AUTHOR OP " HABITS AND MEN," AND " THE QUEENS OP ENGLAND OF THB 
HOUSE OF IIANOVER." 



" Je suis aujourd'hui en train de center ; plaise a Dieii que cela ne soit pas une 
calamite publique." — Brujuat Sayarin. 




EEDFIELD 

84 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK 
18 5 5 



■U3 



,0^ 



Otft. 
7 S '06 



THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

HENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD 

IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF BY-GONE 

HAPPY YEARS 

THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 

BY 

THE AUTHOR 



BILL OF FARE 

PASS 

The Legend of Amphitryon — A Prologue. . . . . . 7 

Diet and Digestion . . . . . . . . , .14: 

Water 18 

Breakfast 29 

Materials for Breakfast 33 

Corn, Bread, &c., 37 

Tea . 48 

Coffee 56 

Chocolate 62 

The Old Coffee House 65 

The French Cafes , ... 76 

The Ancient Cook and his Art 81 

The Modern Cook and his Science 92 

Pen and Ink Sketch of Careme 105 

Dinner Traits 113 

The Materials for Dining ■ 124 

A Light Dinner for Two 152 

Sauces 171 

The Parasite 196 

Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age 206 

Table Traits of England in the Early Times 218 

Table Traits of the Last Century 232 

Wine and Water 251 

The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it 256 

The Making and Marring of Wine 271 

Imperial Drinkers and Incidents in Germany 380 

An Incident of Travel 280 

A few odd Glasses of Wine 290 

The Tables of the Ancient and Modern Egyptians .... 305 

The Diet of Saints of Old . . 316 

The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques 333 

The Support of Modern Saints 338 

The Csesars at Table 353 

Their Majesties at Meat 368 

English Kings at their Tables 395 

Strange Banquets ^^'^ 

The Castellan Von Coucy 423 

Authors and their Dietetics 436 

The Liquor-loving Laureates . 454 

Supper 459 



TABLE TRAITS 



WITH SOMETHING ON THEM. 



THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON. 
A PROLOGUE. 

" Le veritable Amphitryon est VAmphiirycyn ou Von dine.'''' — MoliSrb. 

Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few tliat 
have been more hardly Avorked than the above line of Poquelin- 
Moliere. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he 
who sits at the head of a table is among those "respectable" 
powers who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I 
say, " at the hands ;" for what is " adoration " but the act of put- 
ting the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its components ad 
and 05, or oris) ? and what worship is so common as that which 
takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and 
his altar well supplied ? 

But such a solution of the question afibrds us, after all, no 
enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality or Amphitryon 
himself, whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by 
those who preside at modem banquets. Was he real ? is he a 
myth ? was he ever in the body ? or is his name that of a shadow 
only employed for purposes of significance ? If real, whence came 



8 TABLE TRAITS. 

he? What does classic story say of the abused husband of 
Alcmena. 

Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two nephews, 
fast young men, who were slain by the Teleboans. This is a 
myth. They were extravagant individuals, of the class of those 
who count the chimes at midnight. Their father could not help 
them; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his 
avuncular office, spend his substance for the benefit of his brother's 
children, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, how- 
ever, had an article of small value, — a daughter named Alcmena ; 
and this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without any 
scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the ceremony of 
the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the 
Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter 
presented himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a 
household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the 
father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, his surprise was 
natural, and his ill-temper not to be wondered at. But Jupiter 
explained the imbroglio in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, 
and which they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the 
lively comedies of the miller's man, Plautus. 

An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphi- 
tryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef in particular, 
made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, and brought back all 
the cows and oxen he found amongst them. He was exhibiting 
the cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the animals 
strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it 
back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon, 
falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who 
died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have no 
doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion ; for the Teleboan 
beef was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboes 
themselves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their 
^tolian homes, and settled in the island of Capreae. 

The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast 



THE LEGE2TD OF AMPHITSYOIn. 9 

that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his 
son was among the last-born of gods ; for Hercules was more than 
a hero among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, 
that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his 
hard fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a 
Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and Voltaire 
declares that the tale is to be found in Dow's " Hindostan ;" but 
that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of Amphitryon, 
whose name, by the way, may be as easily " Indicized " as that of 



In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the 
title of " plagiary ;" and an instance of the latter is here before 
us. When Plautus sat in his master's mill, and thought over the 
subject of his lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphi- 
tryon, he took for granted all that he had been told of his hero's 
birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have 
said, but a stolen child. His home is in the far East ; and his his- 
tory was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners by the Indus 
long before the twin founders of Rome had been intrusted, by 
their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Amphitryon was a 
fellow of some renown, and here is his story. 

A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us, — ^but 
he was the individual whom the Greeks stole, and called Amphi- 
tryon, — lived many years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic 
strength and stature ; and he not only found the former a good 
thing to possess, but he used it like a giant. He had for the wife 
of his bosom a fair, but fragile girl, who lay in his embrace, as 
she sang to him at sunset, " like Hebe in Hercules' arms." It was 
not often, however, that such passages of peace embellished the 
course of their daily life. The Hindoo was jealous, and his little 
wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for flatterers ; and her 
monster of a husband had a stick, which showered blows upon 
her when he detected her neglecting her. household work. Cud- 
gelling took its turn with carressing, as it did in the more modern 
and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss 
1* 



10 TABLE TEAITS. 

Roe ; and finally there was much more of the first than there was 
of the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic 
jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insen- 
sible on the threshold of their house, and threatened never again 
to keep up a menage with so incorrigible a partner. 

A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order, — not the King of gods 
and men, as in the Grecian legend, — had witnessed the whole pro- 
ceeding from his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He 
smiled as the husband disappeared ; and, gradually descending in 
his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm 
set earth, gave a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly- 
bruised beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he 
clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as 
D'Egville used to do, when Venua's violin led the orchestra, and 
gave him strength. 

The spirit having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and 
speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused itself into a human 
body, which was found without difficulty, and it clothed the whole 
imder the counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These 
feats of transmutation were common among the eastern deities ; 
and I take for granted that my readers are aware that Pythagoras 
himself^ — who is connected with Table Traits, on the subject of 
beans — was no other than Buddha Goroos, who slipped into 
a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis to wondering 
Europe. 

The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished, on 
recovering herself, to find that she was seated, without any sense 
of pain, on a bench in the little garden, with her apparent husband 
at her feet, pouring out protestations of love and assurances of 
fidelity. - She accepted all, without questioning ; for it was all too 
pleasant to be refused. A new life commenced. The married 
pair became the admiring theme of the village ; and when a son was 
born to them, there ensued such showers of felicitations and flowers 
as had never fallen upon married lovers since the Hindoo world 
first started on its career, on the back of the self-supporting ele- 



THE LEGEND OF AMPHITKYON^. ll 

phant. Their moon never ceased to slied lioney ; and tbis was 
flowing, sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, the 
vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting the counterfeit 
at the inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity of women who 
indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche glasses. In an instant, 
however, he was conscious that his other self was not a reflection, 
but only the cause of many that began crowding into the brain of 
the true man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit irritated 
the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affi-ay ensued, in 
which the mortal got all the blows, and his rival all the advantage. 
The wife was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning towards 
the irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigantic original roar 
forth the tale of his wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights ; and 
it was only during a lull in the storm that he heeded a suggestion 
made, to the eficct, that all the parties should submit their case to 
the judgment of an inspired Brahmin. 

This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the double- 
man that stood before him, one was a dupe, and the other a deity, — 
something, at all events, above humanity. The question was, how 
to discover the divinity. After much cogitation, this was the 
judgment pronounced by the dusky Solomon : " Madam," said he 
to the perplexed lady, " your husband was known as being the 
most robust man ever made out of the red earth, of which was 
composed the father of us all. Now, let these two litigants salute 
you on the lips ; and we pronounce him to be the true man who 
comes ofi" with the loudest report." The trial took place forth- 
with in presence of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal 
first approached the up-raised lips of his wdfe ; and he performed 
the required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred culverins 
to the " pistol shot " kiss recorded of Petruchio. The Judge and 
the people looked curiously to the defendant, as wondering how^ 
on the pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note higher 
than his rival. The Indian god addressed him to what seemed a 
rose-bud wet with dew ; and therewith ensued a sound as though 
all the artillery of the skies were saluting, too, in honour of the 



12 



TABLE TEAITS. 



achievement. Tlie multitude and tlie Brahmin looked, for all the 
world, as if they had lost their hearing ; and it was calculated that 
the astounding din might have been heard by the slumbering tor- 
toise below the antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity 
as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked towards the Brahmin 
for confirmation of their award ; but the Brahmin merely remarked 
to them, with urbanity, that they were the sons and fathers of 
asses, and were unable to distinguish between the almost invis- 
ible seed which diets the bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palm 
of the garden of the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent 
that an earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it 
in fifty millions of mortal-measured years. "Here is the true 
husband," added the Judge, putting his hand on the shoulder of 
the Indian, " who has done all that human being, in the particular 
vocation required, could do ; and here," added he, turning rever- 
entially to the other, " is some supreme being, who has been pleased 
to amuse himself at the expense of his servants." 

The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the Judge's 
perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and somewhat operatic, 
form. He ascended the cloud, which appeared in waiting for him 
like an aerial cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade 
the edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the deity 
appointed to preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair ; — 
and, "if these have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege to 
avenge them according to my good pleasure." The ladies there- 
upon flung flowers to him as he rose, and the husbands saluted 
his departure with rather faint cheers; but throughout India, 
while orthodoxy lasted, there never was a table spread, but the 
master thereat, prince or peasant, invoked the Hindoo deity to 
cast the beams of the sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, 
however, in this matter, has crept in ; and, if Hindoo feasts lack 
real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer 
beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer present sharers 
in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the 
god came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when he per- 



THE LEGEND OF AMPHITKYON. 13 

plexed the household of Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, 
ensconced within a rose ; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, 
and the finger on his lip to discretion ; and every docile guest 
whispers suh 7'osd, and acknowledges the present god. 

It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who gave men 
diet, but forgot digestion. It was like giving them philosophical 
lectures, without power to understand them ; and the case is still 
common enough upon earth. These subjects demand brief notice, 
were it only by way of appendix to this prolegomenical chapter. 



14: TABLE TEAITS. 

DIET AND DIGESTION. 

" No digest of law 's like the law of digestion." — Moore. 

Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philosophers 
among them, have asserted that the perfecting of man and his 
species depends upon attention to diet and digestion ; and, in a 
material point of view, they are not far wrong ; and, indeed, in a 
non-material point of view, it may be said that the spirit, without 
judgment, is very likely to be exposed to indigestion ; and per- 
haps ignorance complete is to be preferred to an ill-digested erudi- 
tion. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all the diseases 
of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other hand, 
held that health purchased by rigorously watching over diet, was 
but a tedious disease. But Walpole was nearly correct, while 
Montesquieu was not very distant from the truth. Dieting, like 
other things, must be undertaken on common-sense principles; 
for, though there be multitudes of mad people in the world, society 
generally is not to be put up on the regime of " Bedlam." 

We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest ; and what 
one man may digest, another would die of attempting. Rules on 
this subject are almost useless. Each man may soon learn the 
powers of his stomach, in health or disease, in this respect ; and 
this ascertained, he has no more business to bring on indigestion 
than he has to get intoxicated or fall into debt. He who offends 
on these three points, deserves to forfeit stomach, head, and his 
electoral franchise ! 

Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive power, 
and too much nutritious food is the next evil to too little. Good 
cookery, by developing flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, 
which bad cookery would perhaps render indigestible. Hence a 
good cook rises to the dignity of " artist." He may rank with the 
chemists, if not with the physicians. 



DIET AND DIGESTION. 15 

Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than vegetable, 
and fresb meats are preferable to salted. In the latter tbe salt is 
a different composition from that -which is taken at meals, and 
which is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather than feeds ; but 
there are exceptions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing 
little to maintain stamina ; but there have been races and classes 
of men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vegetables. 
The poor cannot live upon " curry," it is true ; but in England, 
with less drink and more vegetable food, they would be an im- 
proved race. IS^ot that they could live like a Lazzaroni on mac- 
caroni and the open air. Layard says the Bedouin owes his health 
and strength to his spare diet. But even a Bedouin swallows 
lumps of butter till he becomes bilious : and were he to live in 
England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his strength 
by living on dishes which support him in Arabia Felix. The 
golden rule is " moderation and regularity," he who transgresses 
the rule, will pay for it by present suffering and a " check after 
Christmas. 

A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false thirst to be 
satisfied ; for satisfaction here is only adding fuel to a fire that 
would otherwise go out. On the other hand, the bilious and 
sedentary man need not be afraid of beer ; it is a better stomachic 
than wine. For him, and for all the lords of that heritage of woe, 
a weak stomach, the common-sense system of cookery, as it is 
called, is most required. It is something between the hard crude 
system of the English, and the juice-extracting method of the 
French ; with a leaning, however, towards the latter, (with whom 
it is common to reduce food to a condition of pulp), but uniting 
Vvdth it so much of the English custom as to allow the gelatinous 
matter to be retained, especially in the meats. ^''Festina lente^'' is 
" Latin de cuisine^'' for " Eat slowly," and it is of first-rate value. 
He who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle ; and that 
wanting, I should like to know where ihe, post-prandial enjoyment 
would be. Without it, digestion is not ; and when digestion is 
away. Death is always peering about to' profit by his absence. 
" See to it !" as the Chinese " chop " says. 



16 TABLE TRAITS. 

There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the 
subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question 
till they are driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference 
of opinions among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, 
and Paris maintains that without it digestion is not. " Quot 
homines^ tot sententice" is as applicable here as in every other 
vexed question. But Paris's book on Diet is the safest guide I 
know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or 
simply to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. On 
the other hand, every man may find comfort in the reflection, that 
with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet, but not too 
much of it, and occupation, — without which a worse devil than 
the former enters on possession of the victim, — dyspepsia cannot 
assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be 
the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has 
said as much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and 
physicians ride in carriages. Exactly ! and why ? Because philo- 
sophers themselves, like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after 
praising simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and 
beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that " Le Luxe est une 
jolie chose." 

We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum of books, nor 
copy slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the 
digestion in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may 
safely be consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt ; for 
every man who wakes with a head-ache most ungratefully blames 
that same monitory " self." 

If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather 
than of themselves, it is the " babies." The Rajpoots do not slay 
half so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet 
dieting; or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand 
mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of 
her babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, and 
only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian matrons have 
been quite as savage without intending it. Brantome's uncle, 
Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the advice of a 



DIET AND DIGESTION. IT 

Neapolitan physician, lie took gold, steel and iron, (in powders,) 
mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed 
until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to 
believe) it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull 
in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have 
produced such an eifect. As soon might one expect that the Bol- 
ton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as 
a race-horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean I^owell it 
is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He was the 
accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was out fishing with a 
bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intel- 
ligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under 
Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrust- 
ing his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again 
safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on 
being disturbed, drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and 
contained so creamy a fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and 
rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same 
thenceforward. As Henry H. was the first King who acted as 
sewer, and placed the boar's head on the table of his young son, 
just crowned, so Dean No well was the first church dignitary who 
laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale to the 
notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this 
ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans. 

As we have said, " moderation " is the first principle of diges- 
tion ; and as, according to the Latin proverb, " water gives mode- 
ration," it behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much 
praised, and little appreciated, o.qua pura. 



18 



TABLE TEAITS, 



WATER. 



A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of tlie great tables in 
an hotel in the States, where the bill of fare -was in French, after 
sorely puzzling himself with descriptions which he could not com- 
prehend, "co^e/e^^es a la Maintenon" and ^^oeufs a la braise;'''' 
exclaimed, " I shall go back to first principles : give me some roast 
beef!" So, after speaking of the birth of him, whose putative 
father has lent a name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon 
first principles, and contemplate the uses of water. 

There is nothing in nature more useful ; but, commonly speak- 
ing, you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get any article for 
it in exchange. Adam Smith strikingly compares with it the use- 
lessness and the value of a diamond : the latter has scarcely any 
value in use, but much that is valuable may be had in exchange 
for it. In the desert a cup full of water is worth one full of dia- 
monds; that is, in certain emergencies. The diamond and the 
water illustrate the difference between value in use and value in 



If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend over the 
Bath Pump-room, the best of things, few things would attain to 
excellence vdthout it. Greek philosophy was not wrong which 
made it the principle of life, and the popular belief scarcely 
erred in seeing in every stream, spring and fountain a resident 
deity. Water was so reverenced by certain ancient nations, that 
they would never desecrate it by purifying themselves therewith ! 
The ancient Persians and Cappadocians exemplified their devotion 
by personal dirtiness. In presence of the visible power of the 
stream, altars were raised, and adoration paid to the god whose 
existence was evidenced by such power. The Egyptians gave 
their divine river more than prayers, because their dependence on 
it was more absolute than that of other nations on their respec- 
tive streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food, 



WATEB. 19 

health, and therewith content on the Egyptians; and they, in 
return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, and fruit. 
When human sacrifices were made to rivers, it was probably 
because the river was recognised as giving life, and was worthy of 
being paid in kind. We may smile superciliously at this old 
reverence for the " liquid good," but there was connected there- 
with much that we might profitably condescend to copy. Greece 
had her officers appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those 
officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable matter as 
we draw from the Thames, they would have been thrown into it 
by popular indignation. In Rome, Ancus Martins was long 
remembered, not for his victories, but for his care to supply the 
city with salubrious and sufficient water ; and if people generally 
cursed Nero for his crimes, they acknowledged that he had at 
least not damaged the public aqueducts ; and that in his reign 
ice-houses were first built, the contents of which enabled thou- 
sands to quaflf the cool beverage which is so commendably spoken 
of by Aristotle. 

The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, as the 
crystal ampulla^ with its slender neck and its globular body, was 
of the side-boards of private houses in Rome. The common 
people drank to excess, both of hot water and cold : the former 
they drank in large measures ; — this was in winter, and in taverns 
where they fed largely upon pork, and drank the water as a 
stimulant ! The Emperor Claudius looked upon this regimen as 
an immoral indulgence, and he closed the taverns where proprie- 
tors injured the public stomach by such a diet. Some Romans 
rwere so particular as to boil the water they intended to drink, in 
vessels at their own table. They were like the epicures who 
never intrust the boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may 
notice that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and 
drinker. The "faculty" were unanimous in recommending a 
similar use of it, and some of these gentlemen made considerable 
fortunes by the various methods of applying it. For instance, 
patients resorting to Charmis, to take cold baths in winter under 



20 TABLE TRAITS. 

his directions, were required to pay him a consulting fee of 
iB800 ! He was the first " water-cure " Doctor that ever practised, 
and he realized a fortune such as his successors may aim at in 
vain. 

Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before said, 
namely, that diet and patience formed the universal panacea, 
declared that his "great nostrum was the use of cold water, 
inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and that with disregard 
of precaution against catching cold. I have often," he continues, 
" had the gout in my face- and eyes, and instantly dip my head 
in a pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send 
it anywhere else." And again, alluding to another use of water, 
he says sneeringly, " Whether Christianity will be laid aside I 
cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, 
signify very little. Surely, it is not an age of morality and prin- 
ciple ; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not ?" 

With regard to the sanitary application of water, as noticed by 
Walpole, there can be no doubt but that diet and digestion 
proceed the more perfectly, as the ablution of the body is general 
and daily, and made with cold water. But discretion must be 
used ; for there are conditions of the body which cannot endure 
cold bathing without palpitation of the heart following. In such 
case, tepid water should be used for a time, when the palpitations 
will soon cease, unless the heart be organically affected. 

The same writer's remarks on the Christian uses of water, 
remind me of what is said of some such uses in Weever's " Funeral 
Monuments." He cites the inscriptions that used to be placed over 
the holy water in ancient churches. Some deposed that the sprink- 
ling of it drove away devils : — 

" Hujus aqucB tactus depcllit dcBtnonis actus." 

Others promised a blessing, as, for example : — 

" JLsjperget vos Deus cum omnibus Sanctis suis ad vitam cBternamJ* 



WATER. 21 

Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use ; namely, — 
" Sex operantur aqua benedictd : 



Cor mundat, accidiam (J) fugat, venalia tollii, 
Auget opem, removetque hostem, phantasmata ■pellitP 

Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the sound of water 
inspiring consolatory thoughts, in the passage where he describes 
one " suffering cruel wounds from a diseased heart, but he found a 
remedy; for, sitting down beneath a lofty rock, looking down upon 
the sea, he began to sing." 

The dormitories of many of the old convents were adorned 
with inscriptions recommendatory of personal cleanliness ; but the 
inmates generally were more content with the theory than the 
practice: they were, in some degree, like the man at Bishop- 
Middleham, who died with the reputation of a water-drinker, but 
who really killed himself by secret drunkenness. He praised 
water in public, but drank brandy in private, though it was not 
till after death that his delinquency was discovered. 

The use of water against the spells of witchcraft lingered longer 
in Scotland than elsewhere. The Strathdown Highlander even 
now, it is said, is not ashamed to drink " the water of the dead and 
living ford," on New Year's Day, as a charm to secure him from 
sorcery until the ensuing New Year. 

St. Bernard, the Abbot, made application of water for another 
purpose. Butler says of him, that he once happened to fix his eyes 
on the face of a woman ; but immediately reflecting that this was 
a temptation, he ran to a pond, and leaped up ito the neck into the 
water, which was then as cold as ice, to punish himself, and to van- 
quish the enemy ! 

There is a second incident connected with water, that will bear 
to be told as an illustration, at least, of old times. When Patricius 
was Bishop of Prusa, the Proconsul Julius resorted thither to the 
famous baths, and was restored to such vigorous health thereby, 
that he not only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Esculapius and 
Health, but required the Bishop to follow his example. The Pre- 
late declined, and the Proconsul ordered him to be thrown into a 



22 TABLE TEAITS. 

caldron of boiling water, by wliicb be was no more affected tban 
if be bad been enjoying a batb of tepid rose-water. Wbereupon 
be was taken out and bebeaded. Tbe power tbat kept tbe water 
cool did not interfere to blunt tbe axe. 

We bave seen tbe reverence paid by certain " ancients of old " 
to tbe supposed divinities wbose crystal tbrones were veiled beneatb 
tbe waves. Men under a better dispensation bave sbown, perbaps, 
a worse superstition. Bede makes mention of a Monk wbo tbougbt 
be would purify bis sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He bad, 
tbe cburcb-bistorian tells us, a solitary place of residence assigned 
bim in tbe monastery, adjacent to a river : into tbe latter be was 
accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to bis body. He went 
manfully to tbe bottom, and bis moutb was no sooner again in 
upper air, tban it was opened to give utterance to lusty prayer and 
praise. He would sometimes tbus stand for bours, up to tbe neck, 
and uttering bis orisons aloud. He was in full dress wben tbis 
penance was performed, and, on coming from tbe stream, be let 
bis wet, and sometimes frozen, garments dry upon bis person. A 
Friar, once seeing bim break tbe ice, in order tbat be migbt make 
bis penitential plunge, expressed sbiveringly bis wonder at tbe feat : 
"It must be so ver^/ cold," said tbe Friar. "I bave seen greater cold," 
was tbe sole remark of tbe devotional diver. " Sucb austerity / 
never bebeld," exclaimed another spectator, "/bave bebeld far 
greater," replied tbe Monk. " And tbus," adds tbe bistorian, as 
simply as any of tbem, " tbus be forwarded tbe salvation of many 
by his words and example." 

Connected witb a pious man of our own time, I may mention an 
incident touching water, which is ratber remarkable : — the person 
to w^hom I allude is Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in 
bis last Annual Letter, that be is building a school which will cost 
bim about £600 ; the school is not yet finished : but the water 
used for mixing the mortar has already cost the enormous sum of 
i£60. It is, in fact, a luxury which must be paid for. Where it 
is so dear, it were well if the people never were thirsty ; and 
there were such people of old. 

Tbe late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot Shadwell 



WATER. 23 

was as indefatigable a bather as tbe Monk noticed by Bede. Every 
morning tbroughout the year, during his residence at Barnes 
Elms, he might be seen wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is 
said that, on one occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunc- 
tion, after looking for the Judge in a hundred places where he was 
not to be found, at length took boat, and encountered him as he 
was swimming in the river. There he is said to have heard the 
case, listening to the details as the astonished applicants made 
them, and now and then performing a frolicsome " summersault," 
when they paused for want of breath. The injunction was granted, 
it is said ; after which the applicants left the Judge to continue his 
favourite aquatic sport by himself. 

If the late amiable and able Vice-Chancellor was a water-lawyer, 
so was the late Archdeacon Singleton a water-divine. When tutor 
to the young Lords Percy, he, and the eldest of the sons of the 
then Duke of Northumberland, — Hugh, Earl Percy, — were expert 
swimmers, and often, by their achievements, excited the admiration 
of less daring venturers. The Archdeacon was accustomed to float 
away for miles from Sion, depending upon the tide to float him 
back again. At first, many a boatman looked inquiringly at the 
motionless body carrying on with the stream ; but, when he was 
better known, his appearance thus excited no more surprise than 
if he had been in an outrigger, calmly taking a pull before the 
hour of dinner. 

With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have abounded 
among the good old Heathens, of whom so many stories are told 
that we are not called upon to believe. 

Aristotle, who, like Dr. Macnish, wrote an " Anatomy of Drunk- 
ness," (ILepl Medrjg,) states therein, that he knew, or had heard, of 
many people who never experienced what it was to be thirsty. 
Archonides, of Argos, is cited by him as a man who could eat salt 
beef for a week without caring to drink, therewith or thereafter. 
Mago the Carthaginian, is famous for having twice crossed the 
Desert without having once tasted water, or any other beverage. 
The Iberians, wealthy and showy people as they were, were water- 



24 TABLE TEAITS. 

drinkers ; and it was peculiar to some of tlie Sopliists of Elis, that 
they lived upon nothing but water and dried figs. Their bodily 
strength, which was great, is said to have been the result of such 
diet ; but, it is added, that the pores of their skin exuded any 
thing but a celestial ichor, and that, whenever they went to the 
baths, all the other bathers fled, holding their offended noses be- 
tween their fingers ! Matris, of Athens, lived all his life upon 
myrtle-berries and water ; but, as nobody knows how long he did 
live, it would be rather rash to imitate him in hopes of obtaining 
extension of existence. Lamprus, the musician, was a water- 
drinker, as were Polemon, the Academician, and Diodes, of Pepa- 
rethus ; but, as they were never famous for any thing else, they 
are hardly worth citing. It is different when we contrast Demos- 
thenes with Demades. Demosthenes states, in his second Philippic, 
that he was a water-drinker ; and Phytheas was right, when he 
bade the Athenians remark, that the sober demagogue was, like 
Dr. Young, in fact, constantly engaged in solemn Night Thoughts. 
" Not so your other demagogue, Demades," said Pytheas ; " he is 
an unclean fellow, who is daily drunk, and who never comes into 
your assemblies but to exhibit his enormous paunch." Such was 
the style of election speeches in Greece ; and it has a smack of 
the hustings, and, indeed, of the market, too, in Covent Garden. 

To turn from old to modern Mythology, I may notice that water 
entered into the old sports of St. Distaff's Day, or the morrow 
after Twelfth Day. It is thus alluded to by one whose " mind was 
jocund, but his life was chaste," — the lyric Parson of Dean 
Priors : — 

" Partly work and partly play 
Ye must, on St. DistaJQPs Day. 
From the plough soon free your team, 
Then come home and fother them. 
If the maids a-spinning go, 
Burn the flax, and fire the tow, 
Scorch their plackets, but beware 
That you singe no maiden-hair. 



WATEE. 25 

Bring ia pails of water then, 

Let the maids bewash the men. 

Give St. Distaff all the right, 

Then bid Christmas sport ' Good-night ;' 

And next morrow ev'ry one 

To his own vocation. '' 

When Herricc'^iwrote these lines, I do not know how it may have 
been at Dean Priors, but London was but indifferently supplied 
with water. But now London is supplied with water from eight 
different sources. Five of them are on the north, or Middlesex, 
side of London, three on the Southwark and Surrey side. The 
first comprise the New Eiver, at Islington ; the East London, at 
Old Ford, on the Lea ; the West Middlesex, on the Thames, at 
Brentford and Hammersmith ; and the Chelsea and Grand Junc- 
tion, on the same river, at Chelsea. The south side is entirely 
supplied from the Thames, by the Southwark, Lambeth, and Vaux- 
hall Waterworks, whose names are descriptive of their locality. 

The daily supply amounts to about 35,000,000 of gallons, of 
which more than a third is supplied by the ISTew River Company. 
The original projector of this Company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, 
who proposed to supply the London conduits from the wells about 
Am well and Ware. The project was completed in 1613, to the 
benefit of posterity and the ruin of the projector. The old 
hundred-pound shares are now worth ten times their original 
cost. 

In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were only 
supplied with fresh water twice a-week. Mr. Cunningham, in his 
" Handbook of London," informs us that the old sources of supply 
were the Wells, or Fleet River, Wallbrook and Langbourne 
Waters, Clement's, Clerk's, and Holy Well, Tyburn, and the 
River Lea. Tyburn first supplied the City in the year 1285, the 
Thames not being pressed into the service of the City conduits till 
1568, when it suppHed the conduit at Dowgate. There were 
people who stole water from the pipes then, as there are who 
steal gas now. "This yere," (1479,) writes an old chronicler of 
% 



26 TABLE TEAITS. 

London, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, " a wax-charndler in Flete 
Strete had bi craft perced a pipe of the condite withynne the 
ground, and so conveied the water into his selar, wherefore he 
Avas judged to ride thurgh the Citee with a condite upon his 
hedde." The first engine which conveyed water into private 
houses, by leaden pipes, was erected at London Bridge, in 1582. 
The pipes were laid over the steeple of St. Magnus; and the 
engineer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an Englishman, 
erected a second engine, at Broken Wharf. Previous to 1656, 
the Strand and Coven t Garden, though so near to the river, were 
only supplied by water-tankards, which were carried by those 
who sold the water, or by the apprentice, if there were one in the 
house, whose duty it was to fill the house-tankard at the conduit, 
or in the river. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Ford 
erected water-works on the Thames, in front of Somerset House ; 
but the Queen of Charles IL — like the Princess Borghese, who 
pulled down a church next to her palace, because the incense 
turned her sick, and the organ made her head ache — ordered the 
works to be demolished, because they obstructed a clear view on 
the river. The inhabitants of the district depended upon their 
tankards and water-carriers, until the reign of William III., when 
the York-buildings Waterworks were erected. The frequently- 
occurring name of Conduit-street, or Conduit-court, indicates the 
whereabouts of many of the old sources whence our forefathers 
drew their scanty supplies. 

Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a little earthy 
matter in it ; mineral, or animal, or vegetable matter held in it, 
by solution, or otherwise, renders it decidedly unwholesome. 
Rain water is the purest water, when it is to be had by its natural 
distillation in the open fields. When collected near towns, it 
should never be used without being previously boiled and 
strained. 

The hardness of water is generally caused by the presence of 
sulphate of hme. Horses commonly refuse to drink hard water, 
— a water that can make neither good tea, nor good beer, and 



WATEE. 2^ 

which frequently contains many salts. Soft water, which is a 
powerful solvent of all vegetable matters, is to be preferred for all 
domestic purposes. Eiver water is seldom pure enough for 
drinking. Where purest, it has lost its carbonic acid from long 
exposure ; and in the neighbourhood of cities it is often a slow 
poison, and nothing more, scarcely to be rescued from the name 
by the process of filtration. London is still supplied, at a very 
costly price, with water which is " offensive to the sight, disgusting 
to the imagination, and destructive to the health." Thames 
water, as at present flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal 
and aide-de-camp of cholera. People are apt to praise it, as 
being the water from which is made the purest porter in the 
world; but it is a well-known fact, that the great London 
brewers never employ it for that purpose. 

The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the water will 
become ; hence old wells furnish a purer water than those which 
are more recent ; but a well of soft water is sensibly hardened by 
a coating of bricks. To obviate this, the bricks should be coated 
with cement. Snow water deserves a better reputation than it 
has acquired. Lake water is fitted only for the commonest house- 
hold detergent purposes. But the salubrity of water is converted 
into poison by the conveyances which bring it almost to our lips; 
and we have not yet adopted in full the recommendation of 
Vitruvius and Columella to use pipes of earthenware, as being not 
only cheaper, but more durable and more wholesome, than lead. 
"We still convey away refuse water in earthenware, and bring 
fresh water into our houses in lead ! The noted choleraic colic 
of Amsterdam, in the last century, was entirely caused by the 
action of vegetable matter in the water-pipes. 

Filtration produces no good eflfect " upon hard water. The 
sulphate of lime, and still more the super-carbonate of lime, are 
only to be destroyed by boiling. Boiled water, cooled, and 
agitated in contact with the atmosphere, before use, is a safe and 
not an unpleasant beverage. It is essential that the water be 
boiling when " toast and water " is the beverage to be taken. 



28 TABLE TRAITS. 

Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man — in a natural 
state. It is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst ; and a 
small quantity is sufficient for that effect. The other liquids are, 
for the most part, palliatives merely. If man had kept to water, 
the saying would not be applicable to him, that "he is the only 
animal privileged to drink without being thirsty." But, then, 
where would the medical profession have been ? 

But he does well who, at all events, commences the day with 
water and prayer. With such an one we go hand in hand, not 
only in that service, but, as now, to Breakfast. 



BEEAKFAST. 



BREAKFAST. 



Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses partaking 
of it, when lie said, in illustration of modern Epicureanism, that 
" the world must be encompassed before a washerwoman can sit 
down to breakfast." 

Franklin, who made a " morality " of every sentiment, and put 
opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his 
Essays, in which he says, that " Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, 
dines with Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death." It 
is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly described, as 
far as it goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that 
Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance ; and I do not know 
any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity 
presiding, better than another essayist, though one of a less 
matter-of-fact quality than Franklin, — I mean Leigh Hunt. In 
the " Indicator " he invites us to a " Breakfast in Cold Weather." 
" Here it is," he says, ready laid. " Imiwimis^ tea and coffee ; 
secondly, dry toast ; thirdly, butter ; fourthly, eggs ; jSfthly, ham ; 
sixthly, something potted ; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, 
forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast, is a 
good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the 
snug, in coming down to one's breakfast-room of a cold morning, 
and seeing every thing prepared for us, — a blazing grate, a clean 
table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed 
heads of a set of good-humoured urchins ; and the sole empty 
chair, at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we 
lived alone," he adds, " we could not help reading at meals ; and 
it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at 
a particularly interesting passage, v/ith a hot cup of tea at one's 
elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one's hand. The first look 
at the page, accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes 



30 TABLE TEAITS. 

under the head of ' intensities.' " Under the head of " &c." in 
the above list, I should be disposed to include " sunshine ;" for 
sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glorious a 
thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic ; it cheers the spirits, 
strengthens the body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast 
in hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gardens take 
that meal, of course, in " the arbour," and amid flowers. Break- 
fasts alfresco are all the more intensely enjoyed, because so few 
may be discussed in the open air in a country whose summer 
consists of "three hot days and a thunder-storm;" and in a 
climate wherein, according to Boerhave, people should not leave 
off their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same 
next morning when they are dressing for breakfast ! Walpole and 
Boerhave are right ; our summers do sometimes set in with extra- 
ordinary severity. 

The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required 
a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. 
If Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly 
need wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who 
eat in the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but 
one solid meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appe- 
tites, and these could not be appeased with less than two meals 
a-day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who con- 
sumed three. The Eomans were in this respect, similar to the 
Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or nothing before the hour 
when they compensated for a long fast by a daily meal, where 
they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of 
"bread and cheese," has a very unclassical sound; but good 
authority assures us that it was a custom duly honoured with 
much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the break- 
fast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry 
for his morning repast long before day-break. This was in winter 
time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably induced to do 
so by indisposition ; for he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater, — 
eating much, leaving more, and ordering the remains to be divided 



BEEAEJFAST. 31 

among tlie attendants, wlio duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled 
for the same. 

Modern epicm-es would hardly approve of some of the dishes 
half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast ; but potentates 
of our own days have made their first meal upon very question- 
able matter. 

When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the 
Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on 
the banks of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a 
large grilled water-rat, and alligators' eggs, fried or stewed. The 
company were much amazed at the singularity of taste which 
prom]3ted the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to 
those savoury \dands. The Prince, who gave this public break- 
fast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fas- 
tidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century, our com- 
moners used to give similar entertainments in honour of Princes. 

"JElia Lselia" Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who 
was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly 
untidy entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. 
Her suppers will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she 
gave a concert and vast cold collation, or "breakfast," in honour of 
Prince Edward's birthday. The scene is admirably painted by 
Walpole. " The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded 
with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, com- 
modes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another's backs, and 
loaded with terrines, figures, filligrees, and every thing upon earth ! 
Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden 
China. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis- 
lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things 
she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full of the 
finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, ready to 
be thrown down in every corner. But of all curiosities are the 
conveniencies in every bed-chamber ; great mahogany projections, 
with brass handles, cocks, <fe:c. I could not help saying it was the 
loosest family I ever saw." 



82 TABLE TRAITS. 

There was a philosoplier of the same century, at whom even 
Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom 
Lavoisier called " the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution." Dr. 
Black was famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the 
singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. His usual 
fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of 
milk and water. One morning in November, 1*799, he was seated 
at this modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable 
Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly 
obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, " which were joined 
together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a 
person perfectly at his ease ; and in this attitude he expired, with- 
out a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as 
if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the 
facility with which he departed." There was neither convulsion, 
shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach 
of death. This Avas a more becoming end than that of another 
chemist, the younger Berthollet, although in the latter there was 
something heroical, too. He had taken his last breakfast, when 
he calmly proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests 
of science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an 
atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began registering all the 
successive feelings he experienced, which were such as would have 
been occasioned by a narcotic ; — " a pause, and then an almost ille- 
gible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped from 
his hand, and he was no more." 

I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must 
have recourse to Mr. Forrester's "Norway in 1848 and 1849," to 
show v/hat a breakfast for a traveller should be ; namely, oatmeal 
porridge, or stir-about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such 
a breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller for a length- 
ened period, but to the sedentary, the bilious, and . the dyspeptic, 
its adoption will afford more relief than the best prescription of a 
physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, 
and this is the fashion of it : " Take two or three handsfull of oat- 



MATERIALS FOK BEE A KF AST. 33 

meal ; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine meal, in tlie proportion 
of one third of the latter to two of the former. Mingle the meal 
in a basin of cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing 
about a quart of boiling water ; add a small portion of salt. Set 
the saucepan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from 
time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the composition 
boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. That may be 
known by its glutinous state as it drops from the spoon. Let it 
simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into a deep dish, but 
into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied 
cake ; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding 
moist sugar, to your taste." For the benefit of others, I may add 
my testimony touching this recipe, I have strictly followed the 
instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal 
the dish. It was execrable ! But it has the double recommenda- 
tion of being easy to digest, and of keeping ofi" the sensation of 
hunger for a very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a 
popular breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But 
it is time to consider the various 

MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST. 

And first, of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much 
boast of, — a birth-right, — the least disputable article of that class, 
is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother 
holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage. 

It is a curious fact that aristocratic infants are those who are 
most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and 
are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at 
ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, 
but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and 
healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender 
of what should be one of the purest of a young mother's pleasures, 
and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say 
what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these "early 
2* 



34 TA3LE TRAITS. 

breakfasts ?" Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of 
maternity is an abomination ; and the abomination of having- one's 
child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in inten- 
sity to that of having him but let us keep to " Table Traits.'' 

Milk is too popularly known to need description ; but it is not 
all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The 
cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call 
the aqua pumpaginis^ has very much to do with the dairies of 
London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as 
the milk-maids of the olden time ; if, indeed, maids or milk were 
particularly pure even then ; for milk was a propitiatory offering 
to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, 
Dan Mercury was the one. 

In Rome milk Avas used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as 
beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases 
of the Empress Poppsea ; and some dozen or two were kept to 
maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses' 
milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cra- 
vats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to con- 
ceal a temporary disease in the neck. 

" Oil of milk " and " cow-cheese " were classical names for 
butter, — a substance which was not known in either Greece or 
Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from 
Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legion- 
aries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons.- 
The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, w^ere great butter-con- 
sumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded 
before they were chained to, the sticks beside the tub, at which, 
with sightless orbs, they were set to work. 

There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has 
been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The " butter- 
tower " of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation 
to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return 
for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times ; so that the 
tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiaBtical canons. 



MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST. 35 

• But there is great licence in these matters ; and chapels in Ireland 
have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore's 
erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket ! 

Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their 
milk towards the making of cheese ; and national prejudice has 
run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken 
heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood 
spilt at Dinant, on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian 
cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was 
made of asses' and mares' milk mixed tosfether. I doubt, however 
if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton, — 
which, by the way, is not made at Stilton, — and whose ripeness 
has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. 
Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese, — prin- 
cipally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle 
that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude 
health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people must, it 
was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own 
system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty. 

I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary 
or not ; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles 
human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains 
more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large 
proportion of curd by mere repose. 

Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly 
excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a 
tendency to create acidity ; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will 
correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and 
simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality ; but it is 
sometimes more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with 
milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk 
alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs. 

Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been con- 
demned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where 
they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has 



36 TABLE TEAITS. 

been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical 
gentlemen to eat eggs ! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is 
quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce 
only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address them- 
selves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity 
profiting thereby ! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in 
this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious 
feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to per- 
form for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the 
eggs in Africa, passing the oesophagus of a Priest, could hardly 
nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those 
which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to 
their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young 
babies, six feet high, and men at all points. 

If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this 
respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in 
another : they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the 
aid of fire. They laid them' in a sling, and then applied so violent 
a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by 
the very friction of the air through which they passed ! 

Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, 
just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and 
that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little 
sti'anger. In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory 
portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty differ- 
ent manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization 
has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, 
boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs ! 

Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after 
a whole day's fasting, on St. Agnes' Eve : the profit of such a meal 
was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, 
of that very interesting personage, her future husband ! 

There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, 
by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any- 
thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when 



in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were 
an honest man, or a knave, by the smell ! But the Welsh weaver 
was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs 
but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and 
no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, 
thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with 
him, and in about two days hatched them all 1 Of this brood he 
only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, 
that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; 
and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. 
The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in 
bacon and eggs for many a month ; and the two days spent in 
bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, 
appear. 

Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by 
cooking. The yolk, raw, or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly 
nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with 
jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance 
of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled 
egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The 
best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a 
laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyn- 
crasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust 
w^hich they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also 
against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however 
slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread ; 
of which I will now say a few words, and first of 



CORN. 

Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden 
which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants 
looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of 
the authority which they professed to obey. The sons of the 



38 TABLE TKAITS. 

tribes stood proudly bv the plough, the daughters of the patri- 
archs were gleaners, warriors lent their strength in the threshing 
barn. Kings guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the 
furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth to tell of things that 
w^ere to come. What Heaven had enjoined the law enforced. 
The people were taught to love and hold by the land which was 
in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. 
And it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to 
us the feeling which universally prevails, — that he alone is aristo- 
cratic, has the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which 
he has built his earthly tabernacle. 

The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known 
elsewhere; her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very 
appellations of many of her localities have reference to the beauty 
and the blessings showered down upon them by the Lord. 

Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, 
the home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine 
reigned. Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and 
twenty million bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute she 
annually poured into the store- houses of Imperial Rome. That 
territory could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin 
author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod thrust into 
the soil at night would be found budding before morning. And 
this ancient story, I may notice, has been the venerable father of a 
large family of similar jokes among our Transatlantic cousins. 

The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue 
and use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. 
Romulus, too, acknowledged the divine influence ; and his first 
public act, as King, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into 
a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, and paying 
sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests. 

It was a selfish wish : but no more so than that of the Italian 
peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had 
been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial 
favour at his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaint- 



coPwN-. 39 

ances benevolently, and bade tbem express tbeir wish. "They 
wanted but a modest boon," they replied : " nothing more than a 
declaration from the Pontiff that their district should be hence- 
forth distinguished by its having two harvests every year !" And 
the obliging " successor of the Fisherman " smiled, and not only 
granted their request, but promised more than he was petitioned 
for. " To do honour to my old friends," said he, " not alone shall 
they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year in their 
district shall be twice as long as it is in any other !" And there- 
with the simple people departed joyously. 

The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. 
Their language bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with 
symbols.in connection therewith, and their public treasury '•'• pascua'''^ 
showed, by its name, that " pasturage " was wealth. So he who 
was rich in minted coin enjoyed ih^ pecunia^ or "money," for which 
" flocks " (pecus) were bought or sold. The owner of an " estate " 
(locus) was locuples, a term for a man well endowed with worldly 
goods ; and he was in jDossession of a " salary," who had his 
salarium, his allowance of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to 
savour the food by which he lived. 

The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with 
wine. The labour was considerable ; for, although the plough was 
light, it lacked the conveniencies of the more modern implement. 
Like the Anglo-lSTorman plough, it had no wheels : the wheeled 
plough is the work of the inventive Gauls. 

The French Republicans made a shov>^ of paying honour to 
agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors in which 
were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly 
enough, took their idea from the example presented them by a 
Monarch, all of whom they pronounced execrable ; and by one, 
too, who was the most despotic upon earth, — the Emperor of 
China. 

And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more osten- 
tation than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his " Cor- 
respondence," says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, 



40 TABLE TRAITS. 

whicli places tlie Emj^eror of China, every year, at tlie tail of the 
plough ; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much of the eti- 
quette of European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a 
mere observance, exercising no influence on the public mind. '" I 
defy you," he says, " to find a more impressive ceremony than that 
by which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the husband 
of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting ! — how stimulating ! — how 
proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their nation was, in 
reality, sovereign of the seas ! But now it is little more than a 
ridiculous sport, and without any other eJBfect than that of attract- 
ing a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension." 

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honour- 
able in one ; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons 
engaged in the cultivation of land, " with intent to raise grain and 
fruit necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts." All the 
property of such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure ; 
and it strikes us, that this was a much more reasonably -founded 
exemption than that with which we endow roue, Members of Par- 
liament, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. They 
are free from arrest for six weeks from the prorogation of Parlia- 
ment ; and this is the cause of the farce v/hich is so often played 
in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is "further prorogued." 
The Great Council would be all the better for the absence of men 
who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty's lieges by 
exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare the 
spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose 
mission is to render it productive. 

Wheat is a native of Asia, — some say, of Siberia ; others, of 
'Tartary ; but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found 
there growing in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, 
and then asked its protection. The powerful deity was called 
Robigus, and he was solemnly invoked, on every 25th of April, to 
keep mildew from the grain. The Romans had a reverence for 
corn, but barley was excepted from this homage ; and to threaten 
to put an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to menace 



COEN. 41 

him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still exists, if we may- 
believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered a basin of gruel, 
(made from barley,) declared its proper appellation to be " acqua 
crudeUr He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that it was 
detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry 
man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The 
poet speaks of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when 
he described them as " food for horses in England, and for men in 
Scotland." The grain, however, found a good advocate in him 

who asked, " where did you ever see such horses -and such 

men ?" The meal is, nevertheless, of a heating quality, and certain 
cutaneous diseases are traced to a too exclusive use of it. But 
oatmeal cakes are not bad eating, — where better is not to be pro- 
cured, — though they are less attractive to the palate than those 
sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the Romans not 
only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially. The 
lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to 
be regaling her with " sesame cakes." This sort of provision was 
very largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply ; 
and njrmphs consumed as fast as swains presented. 

If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden's 
affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to 
make them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, 
and suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a " poor's rate " 
paid by the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many 
cases, it was ill applied ; and if Adrian daily fed all the children 
of the poor, other imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands 
of bushels daily on an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. 
It was easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels — twenty times 
that number of pounds' weight — were supplied by Africa ; and 
those " sweet nurses of Rome," the islands of the Mediterranean, 
also poured into the imperial granaries an abundant tribute of the 
golden seed. It is a fact, however, that neither Romans nor Gauls 
were, till a late period, acquainted with the method of making 
fermented bread. 



42 TABLE TRAITS. 

Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the 
gods ; the first men existed on more bitter fare,— bread made from 
acorns. Ceres has the honour of having introduced a better fare. 
Men worshipped her accordingly ; and, abandoning acorns, took also 
to eating the pig, now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. 
Ceres and King Miletus dispute the renown of having invented 
grinding-stones. The hand-mill was one of the trophies which the 
Roman eagles bore back with them from Asia. Mola, the goddess 
charged therewith, looked to the well-being of mills, millers, and 
bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do with this. It 
was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women, selling 
bread, their customers ; and, as he was the God of Eloquence, it is, 
doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are 
endowed with shrewdness and loquacity. 

The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our 
ladies of the Gate, in Billing's Ward, are, probably, not behind 
them; and I am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned 
Bristol market-woman would surpass both. Let me cite an instance. 

Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sisterhood v/as 
standing at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She 
had a .£10 Bank-of-England note in her hand ; and as, in her 
younger days, she had been nurse-maid in the family of one of the 
partners, she thought she might venture to enter, and ask for gold 
for her note. She did so ; but it was at a time when guineas 
were worth five-and-twenty shillings a-piece, and gold was scarce^ 
and in short, she met with a refusal. The quick-witted market- 
woman, without exhibiting any disappointment, thereupon asked 
the cashier to let her have ten of the bank's £1 notes in exchange 
for her " Bank-of-Englander." The cashier was delighted to accom- 
modate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the 
old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the 
promise engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. "Very 
good !" said she, with a gleesome chuckle, " now gi' me goold for 
your notes, or I'll run to the door, and call out, ' Bank's broke !' " 
There was no resisting this, and the market-woman departed tri- 



COKIT. 4:3 

umphantly with her gold. Light-heeled Mercury could not have 
helped her better than she helped herself, by means of her own 
sharp wit. 

Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many 
years, had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharp- 
ened for the appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an 
addition suggested by Numa, who also not only improved the very 
rude ideas which previously prevailed with regard to the making 
of bread, but turned baker himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens 
which he had erected, and to the bakers whom he had raised into 
a " guild," placed under the protection of the goddess Fornax ; — 
and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable, deity she was! The 
public ovens were to the people of Rome what a barber's shop is 
to a village in war time, — the temple of gossip. It had been well 
had they never been anything worse ! The vocation of baker was 
hereditary in a family ; the son was compelled to follow his father's 
calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered a 
senatorship ; but then he was required to make over his property, 
realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour 
was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the 
Governor of the Bank of England. 

If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were 
consigned by the State, she suffered by the religious liberty exer- 
cised by the bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to 
Vesta. Vesta was the very antipodes in character and attributes 
to Fornax ; and the selection of the former would seem to show, 
that the generally reviled bakers could not only praise virtue, but 
practice it. 

Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at 
Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugi- 
listic loaves for the athletse ; batter-bread for the strong, and 
Greek rolls for the weak, of stomach : and there were the 
prepared bread poultices, which people who, like Pompey's young 
soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion, were wont to 
keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyo- 



4:4: TABLE TEAITS. 

mene so slumbering, with Adonis at lier side similarly poulticed, 
can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter ; and yet many a 
blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more panis 
madidus than blushes on the cheeks of either. 

Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He 
says that oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man 
sows the one, he is not sure that he may not reap the other ! He 
also illustrates the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single 
grain produced " innumerable ears of corn ; and that a bushel 
(twenty pounds' weight) of millet would make more than sixty 
pounds of wholesome bread !" The Romans and the Greeks also 
ajDpear to have been acquainted with Indian corn. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature, — 
and he was himself one of the most artificial of characters, — 
knew* very little about her, or her productions. Some of our 
great men are described as being in much the same condition of 
ignorance. Three poets of the last century were one day walking 
through a field, promising a glorious harvest of grain. One of 
them extolled the beauty of the wheat. " Nay," said the second, 
" it is rye." " Not so," rem^arked the third, " it is a field of 
barley." A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the triple 
ignorance. " You are all wrong, gentlemen," said he ; " those be 
oats." The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of 
people who go through a country v/ith their eyes open, and are 
unable to distinguish between its productions. I have seen Lon- 
doners contemplating, with a very puzzled look, the "canary" 
crops growing in the vicinity of Heme Bay; and I was once 
gravely asked if it was " teazle 1" 

These crops are, as I was told by a grower, " capricious." They 
will grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects ; 
but where the aspect is changed, although the land be chemically 
the same, the canary will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in 
large quantities from Heme Bay for London, where it is used for 
many purposes. None of its uses are so singular as one to which 
corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settlements 



CORN. 45 

of America, namely, for stretching boots and shoes. The boot or 
shoe was well filled with corn, and made secure by such tight 
tying that none could escape. It was then immersed for several 
hours in water ; during which the leather was distended by the 
gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, 
a coating of neat's-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the 
boot or shoe fit for wear. 

A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illus- 
trative of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. 
The Doctor, as is well known, — and he was ever ready to confess 
his weakness, — occasionally let his warm temper get the better of 
his excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, more- 
over, how Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence 
of human nature: "Nov. 20th, 1812. — Was provoked with 
Thomas taldng it upon him to ask more corn for my horse. It 
has got feebler under his administration of corn, and I am not 
without suspicion that he appropriates it ; and his eagerness to 
have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to 
my servant and wife ; and, though I afterwards got my feelings 
into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian princi- 
ples, was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. 
Let me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with 
entire charity. 0, my God, support, me!" Was it not to 
Socrates that some one said ? — " To judge from your looks, you 
are the best-tempered man in the world." "Then my looks 
belie me," replied the philosopher ; " I have the worst possible 
temper, by nature ; with the strongest possible control over it, by 
philosophy." Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates ; but the 
control over his stubborn infirmity had something better "than 
your philosophy " for its support. 

Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, accord- 
ing to the Earl of JSTorthumberland's "Household Book," the 
corn was not thrown loose into the manger, but made into loaves. 
It has been conjectured, that the English poor formerly ate the 
same bread. There can be no question about it ; and even at the 



46 TABLE TEAITS. 

present time it is no uncommon sight, in some towns of the 
Continent, to see a driver feeding his horse from a loaf, and 
occasionally taking a slice therefrom for himself. 

There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the 
pigeon. Vancouver,, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls 
pigeons " voracious and insatiate vermin," He calculates the 
pigeons of England and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter ; 
"consuming 159,500,000 pints of corn annually, to the value of 
£1,4:16,562. 105." It is impossible for calculation to be made 
closer. Darwin says of pigeons, that they have an organ in 
the stomach for secreting milk. And it is not alone in the way 
of devouring corn that they are destructive. In the " Philosophi- 
cal Transactions," it is mentioned that pigeons for many ages built 
under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung sponta- 
neously took fire, at last, and the church w^as consumed. 

I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under 
the influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vine- 
gar. A little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own 
legions in the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, 
sometimes require a more substantial support. Thus, after a 
defeat endured by the Great Frederick, hundreds of respectable 
burgesses of the province of Mark set out as volunteers for the 
royal army, — the Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders in blue 
jackets, — each man with a stout staff in his hand, and a rye loaf 
and a ham on his back. " Fritz " glared v/ith astonishment when 
they presented themselves at his head-quarters. " Where do you 
fellows come from ?" said he. " From Mark, to help our King." 
" Who doesn't want you," interrupted Fritz. " So much the bet- 
ter; we are here of our own accord." "AVhere are your 
officers ?" " We have none." " And how many of you deserted 
by the way ?" " Deserted !" cried the Markers indignantly : " if 
any of us had been capable of that, w^e should not be what we 
are, — volunteers." " True !" said the King, " and I can depend 
upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread 
and cook your hams by." 



BUTTEE. 4:7 

When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by tbe Leaguers, 
the want most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that 
of bread. The Guise party, who held the city, — and the most 
active agent of that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the 
sister of Duke Henri of Guise, — endeavoured to keep life in the 
people by means that nature revolts at. When every other sort 
of food had disappeared, the Government within the walls 
distributed very diminutive rolls made of a paste, the chief 
ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder. The 
people devoured them under the name of " Madame de Montpen- 
sier's cakes ;" — no wonder that they soon after exultingly 
welcomed the entry of a King, who declared that his first desire 
was to secure to every man in France his ^^poule au pot P^ But 
enough of bread. Let us examine briefly the subject of 



BUTTER. 

The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority 
for the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having 
twenty religions, and only one sauce, — melted butter. A French 
commentator has added, that we have nothing polished about us 
but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy 
Pantin traces the alleged dislike of the French of his day for the 
English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted butter 
over their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly said to 
have been further directed against us, on account of the declared 
barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with rump-steak, and "poultice," 
as they cruelly characterize " bread-sauce," with pheasant. But, 
to return to butter : — the spilling of it has more than once been 
elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old regime, 
an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted butter 
fall upon the silk suit of a French petit-maitre, the latter indig- 
nantly declared that "blood and butter were an Englishman's 
food." The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. 



48 TABLE TRAITS. 

Lord John Townshend manifested better temper and wit, wlien a 
similar accident befell him, as he was dining at a friend's table, 
where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. " John," 
said my Lord, " you should never grease anything but your coach- 
wheels." 

It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might con- 
sist of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that 
a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus 
Antoninus breakfasted on dry biscuits ; and many a person of less 
rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing 
stronger. Solid breakfasts are only fit for those who have much 
solid exercise to take after it ; otherwise heartburn may be looked 
for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls ; look on muffins and 
crumpets as inventions of men of worse than sanguinary prin- 
ciples, and hot buttered toasts as of equally wicked origin. Dry 
toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent 
powers of digestion ; or they may substitute for it the imperial 
fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak ; 
and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence. 

TEA. 

The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian 
mythologist. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to 
China, vowing he would never take rest by the way ; but he once 
fell asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he 
cut off his eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang 
up in the form of tea-shrubs ; and he who drinks of the infusion 
thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, how- 
ever, is said to have been first used in China as a corrective for 
bad water ; and that not at a remote date. 

In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland 
published treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, 
and the most moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups 
a day might be drunk without injury to the stomach of the 



TEA. 49 

drinker. In the ninth century, Tea was taken in China simply as 
a medicine ; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. The 
early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended its use as 
a common beverage, met with strenuous opposition. France, Ger- 
many, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and 
Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and the vendors of 
it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous 
in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the 
infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth ; but others 
again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as 
filthy " hay-water." Olearius, the German, on the other hand, 
recognised its dietetic virtues as early as 1633 ; while a Russian 
Ambassador, at about the same period, refused a pound or two of 
it, offered him by the Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the 
ground that the gift was neither useful nor agreeable. 

The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the 
value of the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it 
for the sake of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very pro- 
fitable species of barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a 
pound of sago for three or four pounds of tea ; and it is very pos- 
sible that each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on 
the opposite party as duped. 

Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from 
Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be 
surprised that it was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its 
original cost was, as it is said to have been, 60^. per pound. But 
great uncertainty rests as well upon the period of introduction, as 
upon the original importers, and the value of the merchandise. 
One fact connected with it is well ascertained ; namely that Euro- 
pean Companies had long traded with China, before they dis- 
covered the value and uses of tea. 

It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles H., 
owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used 
to drink it in Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that 
health could not be more effectually promoted than by increasing 



50 TABLE TKAITS. 

the fluidity of the blood ; and that the infusion of Indian tea was 
the best means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a 
Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, 
and to his authority its general use in so many parts of Europe is 
to be attributed. 

The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two 
weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, 
(" Garraway's,") and his locale^ Exchange-alley. It was looked 
upon chiefly as a medicinal herb ; and Garway, in the seventeenth 
century, not only " made up prescriptions," in which tea was the 
sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion 
for those who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. 
Its price then varied from 11 5. to 50s. per pound. The taking 
tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance ; and, towards 
the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and Pere Couplet supped 
together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an occurrence which 
is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to lead us to 
suppose that it was an extraordinary event. 

Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, 
on the subject of tea ; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own 
dry medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others ; but he 
was the first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of 
green tea. He " distilled some green tea, injected three drachms 
of the very odorous and pellucid water which he obtained, into 
the cavity of the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by 
which he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of ih.Q 
abdomen and ischiatio nerves of another, and the frog died ; and 
this he thought proved green tea to be unwholesome " — to the 
frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such experiments, 
however, are unsatisfactory. Nux vomica^ for instance, deadly 
poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many 
animals. 

The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the pre- 
paration of the new mystery. "Mrs. Hutchinson's great grand- 
mother was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea 



TEA. 61 

that ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without 
directions how to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a 
bottle, and sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and 
they wondered how any person could like such a diet." ^ 

" Steele, in " The Funeral," laughs at the " cups which cheer 
but not inebriate." " Don't you see," says he, " how they swallow 
gallons of the juice of the tea, while their own dock-leaves are 
trodden under foot ?" 

What Bishop Berkeley did with " Tar Water," when he made 
his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, 
Joseph Williams — " the Christian merchant " of the early and 
middle part of last century, whose biogi^aphy is well known to 
serious readers — did, when he wrote to his friend Green upon the 
necessity of " setting the Lord always before us." When treating 
of this subject, the pious layman adverts to a present of that new 
thing called " tea," which Green had sent him, and which had lost 
some of its flavour in the transit. There is something amusing 
in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which worthy Joseph 
Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea with one upon human 
morals. " The tea," he says,^'came safe to hand, but it had lost the 
elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I 
suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, 
easily admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and 
emits effluvia from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil 
communications among men, which nothing will prevent, (like 
canisters for tea), but taking to us the whole armour of God. 
Had the tea been packed up with cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it 
would have been tinctured with these sweet spices ; so 'he that 
walks with wise men shall be wise.' He that converses with 
heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven, whose treasure 
and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from their holy 
fire ; but ' evil communications corrupt good manners.' I have 
put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original 
flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions 
from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world, 



62 TABLE TBAITS. 

by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and 
fervent prayer, recover his spiritual ardour." The simile, however, 
limps a little ; for if every man canistered himself, and a good 
es^mple, from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example 
would never seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It 
is by contact we brighten, and sometimes suffer. "We must not 
canister our virtue as Mr. Williams did his tea : the latter was for 
selfish enjoyment. A guinea may be kept for ever unstained by 
the commerce of the world, in the very centre of the chest of 
avarice ; but what good does it there ? Let it circulate merrily 
through the hundred hands of the giant Industry, and there will 
be more profit than evil effected by the process. But good Joseph 
Williams would not have agreed with us, and he would take his 
saintly similes from traits of the table. "O that I may walk 
humbly," he says, " and look on myself, when fullest of divine 
communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which, 
consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put 
into it." A very tipsy-like simile ! 

I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved 
stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition ; and 
we are told by the disgusted Connoisseur^ that " persons of fashion 
cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Rane- 
lagh were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion." A 
remark which shows how very poor a connoisseur this writer was 
in matters of propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could 
not be seated at the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the 
first dish that used to be placed before the jubilant guest was a red- 
herring on horseback, set in corn salad. Some hundred and fifty 
years ago, too, there was a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held 
at the " Northern Ale-house in St. Paul's Alley," every member of 
which was of the name of Adam. It was formed in honour and 
remembrance of the first man. The honour was more than Adam 
deserved ; for the first created man not only betrayed his trust, but 
he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the first woman. 
And as for " remembrance," he has managed to survive even the 



TEA. 53 

memory of tlie club founded by bis namesakes, and long since 
defunct. Tbe members were bard drinkers, but not of saffron 
posset, wbicb Arabella, in " The Committee," recommends as " a 
very good drink against tbe heaviness of the spirits." The Adam- 
ites mostly died, as tbe legend says Adam himself did, of heredi- 
tary gout, — an assertion which would seem to indicate that the 
author of it was of Hibernian origin ! 

There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that 
" tea " and " coffee " became, very early, fixed social observances. 
Pope, writing, in 1V15, of a lady who left town after the corona- 
tion of George I., says that she went to the country — 

" To part her time 'twixt reading and Bohea, 
To musGj and spill her solitary tea ; 
Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, 
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon." 

• At the same period, the fortunate belles v/ho remained in town 
made of tea a means for other ends than shortening time. Dr. 
Young, in his " Satires," says of Memmia, that — 

" Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow, 
To cool the Bohea and inflame the,beau ; 
While one white finger and a thuni conspire 
To lift the cup and make the world admire." 

Dr. Parr's delicate compliment is well-known ; but I may be 
pardoned, perhaps, for introducing it here. He was not very par- 
tial to the Thea Sinensis^ though lauded so warmly by a French 
writer, as " nostris gratissima Musis ;" but once being invited to 
take tea by a lady, he, with a mixture of wit and gallantry, qx.- 
c\.?imiQdi, '"'' JSfec^iQ2i-cum possum vivere^ nee sine te V The Christ- 
church men at Oxford were remarkable, at an early period, for 
their love of tea ; and, in reference to it, they were pleasantly re- 
commended to adopt as their motto : " Te veniente die^ te decedente 
notamusr In lYlS, Pope draws an illustration from tea, when 
writing to Mr. Digby : " My Lady Scudamore," he remarks jocosely 



64: TABLE TKATTS. 

" from having rusticated in your company too long, really behaves 
herself scandalously among us. She jDretends to open her eyes 
for the sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night ; 
drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her 
prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, of good 
books, and has not seen Gibber's play of ' The Nonjurer.' " This 
is a pleasant picture of the " good woman" of the last century. 
She drank tea at nine in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to 
be aroused at last, like Belinda, by — 

" Shock, wlio thought she slept too long, 
Leap'd up and waked his mistress with his tongue." 

Tea is little nutritious ; it is often injurious from being drunk at 
too high a temperature, when the same quantity of the fluid at a 
lower temperature would be beneficial. It is astringent and nar- 
cotic ; but its effects are various on various individuals, and the cup 
which refreshes and invigorates one, depresses or unnaturally 
excites and damages the digestive powers of others. Green tea 
can in no case be useful, except medicinally, in cases where there 
has been excessive fatigue of the mind or body ; and even then 
the dose should be small. Tea, as a promoter of digestion, or 
rather as a comforter of the stomach when the digestive process 
has been completed, should not be taken earlier than from three 
to four hours after the principal meal. Taken too early, it dis- 
turbs digestion by arrested chymification, and by causing distension. 
The astringency of tea is diminished by adding milk, and its true 
taste more than its virtue is spoiled by the addition of sugar. 

These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure state, and not to 
the adulterated messes which come from China, or are made up in 
England. If sloe leaves here are made to pass for Souchong, so 
also is many an unbroken chest of " tea " landed, which is largely 
composed of leaves that are not the least akin to the genuine shrub. 
Black teas are converted into green, some say by means of a pois- 
onous dye, others by roasting on copper ; but I do not think this 
process is extensively adopted. At one time the chests were reu- 



TEA.^ 55 

dered heavy by an adulterated mixture of a considerable quantity 
of tea, and a not inconsiderable quantity of eartby detritus^ strongly 
impregnated with iron. But our searchers soon put a stop to this 
knavery. They just dipped a powerful magnet into the chest, 
stirred it about, and, when draw^n out, the iron particles, if any, 
were sure be found adhering to the irresistible " detective." I 
have heard that Lady Morgan's tea-parties, in Dublin, were remark- 
able for the excellent qualities both of the beverage and the com- 
pany; and also for her Ladyship's stereotyped joke, of "Sugar 
yourselves, gentlemen, and I'll milk you all." 

Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not confined in 
China to festive occasions. Tea is solemnly drunk on serious cele- 
brations, with squibs to follow. Thus, for instance, at the funeral 
of a Buddhist Priest, there is thought taken for the living as well 
as for the dead, for the appetites of mortals as well as for the grati- 
fication of the gods. The latter are presented with various sorts 
of food, save animal. It is placed on the altar, and is eaten at 
night by the deities, of course. While the ceremonies preliminary 
to the interment are proceeding, a servant enters the temple, and 
hands tea round to the reverend gentlemen who are oflaciating ! 
The interment usually takes place in the morning, and it is num- 
erously attended; but if, as the long procession is advancing, the 
hour of breakfast should happen to arrive, the corpse is suddenly 
dropped in the highway, the entire assembly rush to their respective 
homes, and not till they have consumed their tea and toast, or 
whatever materials go to the constituting of a Chinese dejeuner^ 
do they return to carry the corpse to its final resting-place, and 
fire no end of squibs over it, in testimony of their afiliction. 
Which done, more refreshment follows ; and perhaps some of the 
mourners retire to Chinese taverns, where imdting placards promise 
them " A cup of tea and a bird's nest for 4c?. 1" 



56 TABLE O-RAITS. 



COFFEE. 

The Englisli and French dispute tlie honour of being the first 
introducers of coffee into Western Europe. The Dutch assert that 
they assisted in this introduction ; and, although coffee was not 
drunk at Rome, until long after it had been known to, and tasted 
b}^, Italian travellers at Constantinople, the Church looked with 
pleasure on a beverage, one effect of which was to keep both 
Priests and people awake. 

An Arab author of the fifteenth century — Sherbaddin — asserts, 
that the first man who drank coffee was a certain Muphti-of Aden, 
who lived in the ninth century of the Hegira, about a.d. 1500. 
The popular tradition is, that the Superior of a Dervish community, 
observing the effects of coffee-berries when eaten by some goats, 
rendering them much more lively and skittish than before, pre- 
scribed it for the brotherhood, in order to cure them of drowsiness 
and indolence. 

It was originally known by the name of cahui or Jcauhi^ — an 
orthography which comes near to that of the ingenious Tovni- 
Councillor of Leeds, who, writing out a public bill of fare for a 
public breakfast, contrived to spell " coffee " without employing a 
single letter that occurs in that word, — to wit, hawphy ! 

Sandys, a traveller of the seventeenth century, gives it no very 
attractive character. Good for digestion and mirth, he allows it 
to be ; but he says that in taste as in colour it is nearly as black 
as soot. 

The coffee-houses of England take precedence of those of France, 
though the latter have more enduringly flourished. In 1652, a 
Greek, in the service of an English Turkey merchant, opened a 
house in London. "I have discovered his hand-bill," says Mr. 
Disraeli, " in which he sets forth the virtue of the coffee drink, 
first publiquely made and ^Id in England, by Pasqua Rosee, of 
St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, at the sign of his o^vn head." Mr. 



COFFEE. 57 

Peter Cunningham cites a ms. of Oldys in his possession, in which 
some fuller details of much interest are given. Oldys says, " The 
first use of coffee in England was known in 1657, when Mr, Daniel 
Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to London 
. one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for 
him every morning. But the novelty thereof drawing too much 
company to him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his 
son-in-law's, to sell it publicly ; and they set up the first coffee- 
house in London, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. But they separ- 
ating, Pasqua kept in the house ; and he who had been his partner 
obtained leave to pitch a tenfc, and sell the liquor, in St. Michael's 
church-yard." Aubrey, in his Anecdotes, states that the first 
vendor of coffee in London was one Bowman, coachman to a 
Turkey merchant, named Hodges, who was the father-in-law of 
Edwards, and the partner of Pasqua, who got into difficulties, 
partly by his not being a freeman, and who left the country. Bow- 
man was not only patronized, but a magnificent contribution of 
one thousand sixpences was presented to him, wherewith he made 
great improvements in his coffee-house. Bowman took an appren- 
tice, (Paynter,) who soon learned the mystery, and in four years 
set up for himself. The coffee-houses soon became numerous : the 
principal were Farres', the Rainbow, at the Inner-Temple Gate, and 
John's, in Fuller's Rents. "Sir Henry Blount," says Aubrey, 
"was a great upholder of coffee, and a constant frequenter of 
coffee-houses." 

The frequenters of these places, however, were considered as 
belonging to the idle and dissipated classes ; and the reputation 
was not altogether undeserved. Respectable people denounced 
the coffee-drinking evils, illustriously obscure and loyal people 
dreaded the politics that were discussed at the drinking, and tipsy 
satirists hurled strong contempt and weak verse at the new-fangled 
fashion of abandoning Canary wine for the Arabian infusion. The 
fashion, however, extended rapidly ; the more so, that cups were 
soon to be had at so low a price, that the shops where they were 
sold went by the name of " Penny Universities." The ladies, who 
3* 



58 TAELE TRAITS. 

were excluded from public participation in tlie bitter enjoyment, 
made some characteristic complaints against tbe male drinkers, 
and intimated that the indulgence of coffee-drinking would in time 
deteriorate, if not destroy, the human race; but the imbibers 
heeded not the complaint, their answer to which was that of Berar.-' 
ger's gay martial philosopher : — 

" J\'ous laisserions Jinir le nionde^ 
Si nos femmes le voulaient bienJ^ 

"While the ladies, through their poetical representatives, were 
complaining, male philanthropists quickly discerned the social 
uses of the cup ; and Sir Henry Blount acknowledges, with grate- 
ful pleasure, that the custom, on the part of labouring men and 
apprentices, of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, instead of 
their ordinary matinal draught of beer or wine, was chiefly owing 
to Sir James Muddiford, " who introduced the practice hereof 
jfirst in London." 

The Government of the Stuarts, hating free discussion and not 
particularly caring for wit, watched the coffee-houses with much 
jealousy, and placed as much restriction upon them as they 
possibly could strain the law to. The vexatious proceeding did 
not secure the desired result ; and the coffee-house wits laughed 
at the Government. The wits, however, were not always success- 
ful either in their praise of, or satire against, coffee. Pepys, on 
the 15th of October, 1667, went to the Duke's House, to see the 
comedy of " Taruga's Wiles ; or, the Coffee-House," of which he 
says, " The most ridiculous, insipid play that ever I saw in my 
life ; and glad we were that Betterton had no part in it." But 
Pepys was probably not in the true vein to decide critically that 
night ; for his pretty maid Willett was sitting at his side ; and 
his wife, who was on the other, spoiled the effect of the play by 
her remarks on the girl's " confidence." Perhaps one of the most 
curious apologies for coffee-houses was that of Aubrey, who 
declared that he should never have acquired so extensive an 
acquaintance but for the " modern advantages of coffee-houses in 



COFFEE. ' 69 

this great city, before which men knew not how to be acquainted 
but with their own relations and societies ^ And Aubrey, who has 
been called the small Boswell of his day, " was a man who had 
more acquaintances than friends." 

Yemen is the accepted birth-place, if we may so speak, of the 
coffee tree. Pietro de la Yalle introduced it into Italy, La Royne 
into Marseilles, and Thevenot brought it with him to Paris. In 
1643, a Levantine opened a coffee-house in Paris, in the Place du 
Petit Chatelet ; but it was Soleiman Aga, Turkish Ambassador in 
Paris, in 1689, who was the medium through which coffee found 
its way into the realm of fashion. Had it been really what some 
have supposed it to have been, — the black broth of the Lacedae- 
monians, — he could have made it modish by his method of 
service. This was marked by all the minute details of oriental 
fashion, — small cups and foot-boys, gold-fringed napkins and 
pages, coffee wreathing with smoke, and Ganymedes wreathed 
with garlands, the first all aroma, and the hand-bearers all otto of 
roses ; the whole thing was too dazzling and dramatic to escape 
adoption. But the intolerable vulgar would imitate their betters, 
and coffee became as common at taverns as wine, beer, and smok- 
ing. It would have inevitably been abandoned to coarse appe- 
tites only, but for Fran9ois Procope, a Sicilian, who, in the Rue de 
I'Ancienne Comedie, exactly opposite to the old play-house in the 
Faubourg St. Germain, opened an establishment expressly for the 
sale of coffee, but with such innocent additional articles as ices, 
lemonade, and the like harmless appliances, to make pleasant the 
seasons in their change. The Cafe Procope became the immedi- 
ate resort of all the wits, philosophers, and refined roues of Paris. 
There Rousseau wrote or repeated the lines which brought him 
into such frequent trouble. There Piron muttered the verses 
with which the incitement of devils inspired him. There Voltaire 
tried to rule supreme, but found himself in frequent bitter contest 
with Palissot and Freron. The Cafe Procope was the morning 
journal, the foreign news-mart, the exchange, — literary, witty, 
and emphatically charming. There Lamothe renewed the con- 



60 TABLE TEAITS. 

test between the ancient and modern, the classical and the 
romantic, drama. There the brilliant Chevalier de St. Georges 
gave lessons in fencing to the men of letters ; and thence Dorat 
addressed his amorous missives to Mademoiselle Saunier. There 
Marmontel praised Clairon, and the Marquis de Bievre tried his 
calembourgs; and there Duclos-and Mercier made their sketches 
of society, at once serious and sarcastic. The universal favour in 
which coffee is still held in Paris, and the crowds which still wait 
on " Andromaque," sufficiently belie the famous prophecy of 
Madame de Sevigne, that " coffee and Racine would have their 
day." The dark infusion reigns without a rival, the demi-tasse 
follows dinner oftener than " grace," Rachel helps to keep Racine 
alive, and ca/e, in its turn, has the reputation of being one of the 
favourite stimulants of the great tragedienne. 

With regard to the making of coffee, there is no doubt that the 
Turkish method of pounding the coffee in a mortar is infinitely 
superior to grinding it in a mill, as with us. But after either 
method the process recommended by M. Soyer may be advanta- 
geously adopted ; namely, " Put two ounces of ground coffee into 
a stew-pan, which set upon the fire, stirring the coffee round with 
a spoon until quite hot, then pour over a pint of boiling water ; 
cover over closely for five minutes, pass it through a cloth, warm 
again, and serve." 

The chemist Laplace explained to Napoleon the results of 
various methods of manipulation. "How is it, Sir," said the 
Emperor, " that a glass of water in which I melt a lump of sugar, 
always appears to me to be superior in taste to one in which I put 
the same quantity of powdered sugar?" "Sire," said the sage, 
"there exist three substances, whose elements are precisely the 
same ; namely, sugar, gum, and starch. They only differ under 
certain conditions, the secret of which Nature has reserved to 
herself; and I believe that it is possible, that, by the collision- 
caused by the pestle, some of the portions of the sugai* pass into 
the condition of gum or starch, and thence arises the result which 
has been observed." 



COFFEE. 61 

Medical men are widely a£ issue as to tlie merits of coffee. All 
however, are agreed that it stimulates the brain, and banishes 
somnolency. Voltaire and Buffon were great coffee-drinkers ; but 
I do not know that we are authorized to attribute the lucidity of 
the one or the harmony of the other to the habit in question. 
Ability would be cheaply purchased if that were the case ; and 
the " royal road " would have been discovered where it had never 
been looked for. 

The sleeplessness produced by coffee is not one of an unplea- 
sant character. It is simply a painless vigilance; but, if often 
repeated, it may be exceedingly prejudicial. Brillat de Savarin 
illustrates the power of coffee by remarking, that a man may live 
many years who takes two bottles of wine daily ; but the same 
quantity of strong coffee would soon make him imbecile, or drive 
him into consmnption. 

Taken immediately after dinner, coffee aids the dyspeptic, espe- 
cially to digest fat and oily aliment, which, without such stimu- 
lant, would undoubtedly create much disturbance. The Turks 
drink it to modify the effects of opium. Cafe an lait^ that is, 
three parts of milk to one of coffee, is the proper thing for break- 
fast; but the addition of milk to that taken after dinner is a 
cruelty to the stomach. A Dutchman, named Nieudorff, is said 
to have been the first who ventured on the experiment of mixing 
milk with coffee. When he had the courage to do this, the two 
liquids together were considered something of such an abomina- 
tion as we should now consider brown sugar with oysters. 

I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage of Vol- 
taire, at the Cafe Procope, was ^^choca,'''' — a mixture of coffee 
(with milk) and chocolate. The Emperor Napoleon was as fond 
of the same mixture as he was of Chambertin ; and, in truth, I do 
not know a draught which so perfectly soothes and revives as that 
of hot, well-frothed " cAoca." 

Substances mixed with coffee, or substitutes for the berry alto- 
gether, have been tried with various degrees of success. Roasted 
acorns have been made to pass for it when ground. There is 



62 TABLE TEAITS. 

more cliicory than coffee consumed at the present time in France ; 
and the infusion of the lupin does duty for it at the poor hearths 
in Flanders ; as that of roasted rye (the nearest resemblance to 
coffee) does in America. Experimentalists say, that an excellent 
substitute for coffee may be made from asparagus ; and Frankfort, 
alarmed lest the complications of the " Eastern Question " should 
deprive it of the facilities for procuring the berry as heretofore, is 
gravely consulting as to whether asparagus coffee may be a beve- 
rage likely to be acceptable as a substitute for the much prized 
" demi-tasse.^'' 

CHOCOLATE. 

Ferdinand Cortez went to Mexico in search of gold ; but the 
first discovery he made was of chocolate. The discovery was not 
welcomed ecclesiastically, as coffee was. This new substance was 
considered a sort of wicked luxury, at least for Monks, who were 
among the earliest to adopt it, but who were solemnly warned 
against its supposed peculiar effects. The moralists quite as 
eagerly condemned it; and in England Koger North angrily 
asserted, that " the use of coffee-houses seems much improved by 
a new invention, called * chocolate-houses,' for the benefit of rooks ' 
and cullies of quality, where gambling is added to all the rest, 

and the summons of W seldom fails ; as if tTie devil had 

erected a new university, and these were the colleges of its Profes- 
sors, as well as his schools of discipline." The Stuart jealousy of 
these localities, where free discussion was amply enjoyed, seems to 
have influenced the Attorney-General of James II. ; for, although 
they may not have been frequented, he says, by " the factious gen- 
try he so much dreaded," he adds, " This way of passing time 
might have been stopped at first, before people had possessed 
' themselves of some convenience from them of meeting for short 
dispatches, and passing evenings with small expenses." Of what 
chiefly recommended these places, the stern official thus made a 
grievance. 



CHOCOLATE. 63 

Chocolate (or, as the Mexicans call it, chocolalt) is the popular 
name for the seeds of the cocoa, or, more properly, the cacao^ 
plant, in a prepared state, generally with sugar and cinnamon. 
The Mexicans improve the flavour of the inferior sorts of cacao 
seeds by burying them in the earth for a month, and allowing 
them to ferment. The nutritious quality of either cacao or choco- 
late is entirely owing to the oil or butter of cacao which it contains. 
Cacao-nibs, the best form of taking this production, are the seeds 
roughly crushed. When the seed is crushed between rollers, the 
result is flake cacao. Common cacao is the seed reduced to a 
paste, and pressed into cakes. The cheap kinds of chocolate are 
said to be largely adulterated with lard, sago, and red-lead, — a perni- 
cious mixture for healthy stomachs ; but what must it be for weak 
stomachs craving for food at once nutritious and easy of diges- 
tion ? The " patent " chocolates of the shops are nothing more 
than various modes of preparing the cacao seeds. 

The ladies of Mexico are so excessively fond of chocolate, that 
they not only take it several times during the day, but they occa- 
sionally have it brought to them in church, and during the ser- 
vice. A cup of good chocolate may, indeed, afibrd the drinker 
strength and patience to undergo a bad sermon. The Bishops 
opposed it for a time, but they at length closed their eyes to the 
practice. I am afraid there is no chance of the fashion being 
introduced into England. The advantages would be acknowledged ; 
but then there would be a savour of Popery detected about it, that 
would inevitably cause its rejection. The Church herself found a 
boon in this exquisite supporter of strength. The Monks took it 
of a morning before celebrating Mass, even in Lent. The orthodox 
and strong-stomached raised a dreadful cry at the scandal ; but 
Escobar metaphysically proved, that chocolate made with water 
did not break a fast ; thus establishing the ancient maxim, " Liqui- 
dum non frangit jejuniumy 

Spain welcomed the gift of chocolate made her by Mexico with 
as much enthusiasm as she did that of gold by Peru ; the metal 
she soon squandered, but chocolate is still to be found in abundance 



64: TABLE TEAITS. 

in the Peninsula ; it is an especial favourite witli ladies and Monks, 
and it always appears on occasions when courtesy requires that 
refreshments be offered. The Spanish Monks sent presents of it to 
their brethren in French monasteries; and Anne of Austria, 
daughter of Philip II. of Spain, when she brought across the Pyre- 
nees her hand, but not her heart, to the unenergetic Louis XIII., 
brought a supply of chocolate therewith ; and henceforth it became 
an established fact. In the days of the Regency it was far more 
commonly consumed than coffee ; for it was then taken as an agree- 
able aliment, while coffee was still looked upon as a somewhat strange 
beverage, but certainly akin to luxury. In the opinion of Lin- 
naeus it must have surpassed all other nutritious preparations, or 
that naturalist would hardly have conferred upon it, as he did, the 
proud name of Theohroma, " food for the Gods !" 

Invalids will do well to remember, that chocolate made with 
vanilla is indigestible, and injurious to the nerves. Indeed, there 
are few stomachs at all that can bear chocolate as a daily meal. 
It is a highly concentrated aliment ; and all such cease to act 
nutritiously if taken into constant use. 

We will now look into some of those famous resorts of by-gone 
days, where coffee and chocolate were prenared, and wit was bright 
and spontaneous. - 



THE OLD COFFEE-HOIJSES. 65 



THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 

The " Grecian " appears to have been tlie oldest of the better- 
known coffee-houses, and to have lasted the longest. It was opened 
by Constantine, a Grecian, "living in Threadneedle-street, over 
against St. Christopher's Church," in the early part of the last half 
of the seventeenth century. Its career came to a close towards 
the middle of the nineteenth century; namely, in 1843, when the 
Grecian Coffeehouse, then in Devereux-court, Strand, where it had 
existed for very many years, was converted into the " Grecian 
Chambers," or lodgings for bachelors. 

Constantine not only sold " the right Turkey coffee berry, or 
chocolate," but gave instructions how to " prepare the said liquor 
gratis." The "Grecian " was the resort rather of the learned than 
the dissipated. The antiquarians sat at its tables ; and, despising 
the news of the day, discussed the events of the Trojan war, and 
similar lively, but remote, matters. The laborious trifling was 
ridiculed by the satirists ; and it is clear that there were some 
pedants as well as philosophers there. It was a time when both 
sages and sciolists wore swords ; and it is on record that tw^o 
friendly scholars, sipping their coffee at the " Grecian," became 
enemies in argument, the subject of which was the accent of a 
Greek word. Whatever the accent ought to have been, the quar- 
rel was acute, and its conclusion grave. The scholars rushed into 
Devereux-court, drew their swords, and, as one was run through 
the body and killed on the spot, it is to be supposed that he was 
necessarily wrong. But the duel was the strangest method of 
settling a question in grammar that I ever he^-d of. Still it was 
rather the scholars than the rakes who patronized the " Grecian ;" 
and there were to be found the Committee of the Royal Society, 
and Oxford Professors, enjoying their leisure and hot cups, after 
philosophical discussion and scientific lecturing; and even the 
Privy Council Board sometimes assembled there to take coffee after 
Council. 



bb TAI5LE TEAITS. 

The " coffee-houses," whicli were resorted to for mere conver- 
sation as well as coffee, began on a first floor ; they were the seed, 
as it were, whence has arisen the political and exclusive " club " 
of the present day. The advantages of association were first 
experienced in coffee-houses ; but at the same time was felt the 
annoyance caused by intrusive and unwelcome strangers. The 
club, with its ballot-box to settle elections of members, was the 
natural result. 

William Urwin's Coffee-house, known as "Will's," from its 
owner's name, and recognized as the " Wits'," from its company, 
was on the first floor of the house at the west corner of Bow- 
street and Russell-street, Covent Garden. In the last half of the 
seventeenth century, it was at the height of its good fortune and 
reputation. The shop beneath it was kept by a woollen-draper. 

Tom Brown says that a wit was set up at a small cost ; he was 
made by " peeping once a day in at Will's," and by relating " two 
or three second-hand sayings." It was at Will's that Dryden 
" pedagogued " without restraint, accepted flattery without a blush, 
and praised with happy -complacency the perfection of his own 
works. He was the great attraction of the place, and his presence 
there of an evening filled the room with admiring listeners, or 
indiscreet adulators. Dryden had the good sense to retire early, 
when the tables were full, and he knew he had made a favourable 
impression, which the company might improve in his absence. 
Addison, more given to jolly fellowship, sat late v/ith those who 
tarried to drink. Pepys, recording his first visit, in February, 
1663-4, says that he stepped in on his way to fetch his wife, "where 
were Dryden the poet, (I knew at Cambridge,) and all the wits Of 
the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. 
And had I had time then, as I could at other times, it \\dll be 
good coming thither ; for there I perceive is very witty and plea- 
sant discourse. But I could not tarry ; and, as it was late, they 
were all ready to go away." 

The reign of Dryden at Will's was not, however, witliout its 
pains. Occasionally, a daring stranger, like young Lockier, raw 
from the country, would object to the dicta of the despot. Thus, 



THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 67 

when Dryden praised his "Mac Flecknoe," as the first satire 
"written in heroics," the future Dean timidly suggested that the 
"Lutrin" and the " Secchia Rapita'''' were so written ; and Dryden 
acknowledged that his corrector was right. The London beaux 
would have been afraid, or incapable, of setting Dryden right ; 
they were sufficiently happy if they were but permitted to dip 
their fingers into the poet's snuff"-box, and, at a separate table, 
listen to the criticisms uttered by the graver authorities who were 
seated round another, at the upper end of the room. Of the dis- 
putes that there arose, " glorious John " was arbiter ; for his parti- 
cular use a chair was especially reserved ; therein enthroned, he 
sat by the hearth or the balcony, according to the season, and 
delivered judgments which were not always final. 

Xo man was better qualified to do so, for the " specialty " of 
Will's Cofi'ee-house was poetry. Songs, epigrams, and satires, 
circulated from table to table ; and the wits judged plays, even 
Dryden's, untiFthe play-wrights began to satirize the wits. With 
Dryden, "Will's" lost some of its dignity. Late hours, card- 
playing, and politics; poets more didactic in their verse, and 
essayists more instructive in their prose, than in their daily 
practice ; " dissipateurs " like Addison, and peers who shared in 
Addison's lower tastes, without either his talent or occasional 
refinement, — spoiled the character of "Will's," where, 'hj the way, 
Pope had been introduced by Sir Charles Wogan, though, years 
before, in his youth, he had been proud to follow old Wycherley 
about from cofi"ee-house to cofi'ee-house; and then "Button's" 
attracted the better portion of the company, and left Will's to the 
vulgar and the witless. 

" Button's " Cofi'ee-house was so named fronl its original pro- 
prietor, who had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, the 
wife of Addison. It was situated in Great Russell-street, on the 
south side, about two doors from Covent Garden. What Dryden 
had been at " Will's," Addison was at " Button's." There, — after 
writing during the morning at his house in St. James's Place, 
where his breakfast-table was attended by such men as Steele, 
Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, with some 



68 TABLE TRAITS. 

of whom lie generally dined at a tavern, — he was to be found of 
an evening, until the supper hour called him and his companions 
to some other tavern, where, if not at Button's, they made a night 
of it. Pope was of the company for almost a year, but left it 
because the late hours injured his health ; and furthermore, per- 
haps, for the reason, that his irritable temper had rendered him 
unpopular, and that he had so provoked Ambrose Philips, that 
the latter suspended a birchen rod over Pope's usual seat, in inti- 
mation of what the ordinary occupant would get if he ventured 
into it. The Buttonians were famous for the fierceness of their 
criticism, but it appears to have been altogether a better organized 
establishment than Will's ; for while the parish registers show that 
the landlord of the latter was fined for misdemeanour, the vestry- 
books of St. Paul (Covent Garden), prove that Button paid " for 
two places in the pew No. 18, on the south side of the north aisle, 
^2. 2s. ;" and charity leads us to conclude that Daniel and his 
wife occupied the places so paid for, and were oKhodox, as well 
as -loyal. The " Lion's Head " of the " Guardian," which was put 
up at Button's, over the box destined to receive contributions for 
the editor, is now at Woburn, in the possession of the Duke of 
Bedford. 

Of coffee-houses that went by the name of " Tom's " there were 
three. At the one in Birchin-lane, Garrick occasionally appeared 
among the young merchants ; and Chatterton, before despair slew 
even ambition, more than once dined. At the second house so 
called, in Devereux-court, many of the scholars, critics, and scien- 
tific men of the last century used to congregate. There Akenside 
essayed to rule over the tables as Dryden had done at " Will's," 
and Addison at " Button's ;" but his imperious rule was often over- 
thrown by "flat rebellion." The "Tom's" was opposite "But- 
ton's," and stood on the north side of Great Russell-street, JN'o. 1 7. 
It received its name from the Christian appellation of its master, 
Thomas West, who committed suicide in 1 72 2. If guests gained 
celebrity in the latter days at " Will's " for writing a " posie for a 
ring," so at "Tom's" Mr. Ince was held in duo respect, for the rea- 
son that he had composed a solitary paper for the " Spectator." It 



THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 69 

was a place where the tables were generally crowded from the 
time of Queen Anne to that of George III. Seven hundred of the 
nobility, foreign Ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age, sub- 
scribed a guinea each, in 1714, for the erection of a card-room; 
and this fact, with the additional one that, only four years later, an 
enlarged room for cards and conversation was constructed, may 
serve to show by what sort of people, and for what particular 
purposes " Tom's " was patronized. 

At the time that White's Chocolate-house was opened at the 
bottom of St. James's-street, — the close of the last century, — it 
was probably thought vulgar ; for there was a garden attached, 
and it had a suburban air. At the tables in the house or garden 
more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or threw his main, 
before he quietly mounted his horse and rode slowly down Picca- 
dilly towards Bagshot. Before the establishment was burned 
down, in 1Y33, it was famous rather for intensity of gaming than 
excellence of chocolate. It arose from its ashes, and settled at 
the top of the street, into a fixedness of fashion that has never 
swerved. Gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment were the charac- 
teristics of the place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield there 
" gamed and pronounced witticisms among the boys of quality.' 
Steele dated all his love-news in the " Tattler " from White's. It 
was stigmatized as " the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers 
and noble cullies ;" and bets were laid to the effect that Sir Wil- 
liam Burdett, one of its members, would be the first Baronet who 
would be hanged. The gambling went on till dawn of day ; and 
Pelham, when Prime Minister, was not ashamed to di\dde his time 
between his official table and the picquet-table at White's. Sel- 
wyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the room with his wit. As a 
sample of the spirit of betting which prevailed, Walpole quotes 
" a good story made at White's." A man dropped down dead at 
the door, and Tvas carried in ; the club immediately made bets 
whether he was dead or not, and, when they were going to bleed 
him, the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect 
the fairness of the bet ! 

Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in " table traits." 



70 ' TABLE TRAITS. 

Thus, in 1136, every member was required to pay an extra guinea 
a year " towards having a good cook." The supper was on table 
at ten o'clock; the bill at twelve. In 1758, it was agreed that he 
who transgressed the rules for balloting should pay the supper 
reckoning. In 1797 we find, "Dinner at 10s. 6d. per head, (malt 
liquor, biscuits, oranges, apples, and olives included-j) to be on 
table at six o'clock ; the bill to be brought at nine." " That no 
hot suppers be provided, unless particularly ordered ; and then to 
be paid for at the rate of 8s. per head. That in one of the rooms 
there be laid every night (from the Queen's to the King's birth- 
day) a table, with cold meat, oysters, &c. Each person partaking 
thereof to pay 4s., malt liquor only included." 

Colley Gibber was a member, but, as it would seem, an honor- 
ary one only, who dined with the Manager of the Club, and was 
tolerated afterwards by the company for the sake of his wit. Mr. 
Cunningham states, that at the supper given by the Club in 1814, 
at Burlington Ilouse, to the Allied Sovereigns, there were covers 
laid for 2,400 people, and that the cost was " £9,849. 2s. 6d." 
"Three weeks after this, (July 6, 1814,) the Club gave a dinner 
to the Duke of Wellington, which cost £2,840. 10s. 9dy The 
dinner given in the month of February of the present year, to 
Prince George of Cambridge, was not one to welcome a victorious 
warrior, but to cheer an untried, about to go forth to show 
himself worthy of his spurs. White's ceased to be an open Cho- 
colate-house in 1736, from which period it has been as private an 
establishment as a Club can be said to be. 

The politicians had their coffee-houses as well as the wits. The 
" Cocoa Tree," in St. James's-street, was the Tory house in the 
reign of Queen Aj3ne. The " St. James's " was the Whig house. 
It was a well-frequented house in the latter days of George II., 
when Gibbon recorded his surprise at seeing a score or two of the 
noblest and wealthiest in the land, seated in a noisy coffee-room, 
at little tables covered by small napkins, supping off cold meat 
or sandwiches, and finishing with strong punch and confused 
politics. 

The St. James's Coffee-house ranked Addison, Swift, Steele, and, 



THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES. 71 

subsequently, Goldsmith and Garrick, among its habitues. It had 
a more solid practical reputation than any of the other coffee- 
houses; for within its walls Goldsmith's poem of "Retaliation" 
originated. But politics was its "staple;" and poor politicians 
seem to have been among its members, seeing that many of them 
were in arrears with their subscriptions ; but these were probably 
the outer-room men ; for the magnates, who were accustomed to 
sit and watch the line of Bourbon, within the steam of the great 
coffee-pot, were doubtless punctual in their payments ere they 
could have earned the privilege. And yet their poetical acumen 
was often more correct than their political discernment ; for while 
the company at Button's ascribed the " Town Eclogues " to Gay, 
the coffee-drinkers at St. James's were unanimous in giving them 
to a lady of quality. 

Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the " Bedford," in 
Covent Garden, was probably the first ; but, for good fellowship, 
it equalled any of the more exclusive tiouses ; for Garrick, and 
Quin, and Murphy, and Foote, were of the company. Wit was 
the serious occupation of all its members ; and it never gave any 
of them serious trouble to produce in abundance. Quin, above 
all, was brilliant in the double achievements of Epicureanism and 
sparkling repartee. Garrick, in allusion to the sentiments often 
expressed here by his brother actor, wrote the epigrammatic lines, 
supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference to a discussion on 
embalming the dead, and which will be found in a subsequent 
chapter, under the head of " Table Traits of the last Century." 

JEsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin was to George 
the Third, — he " taught the boy to speak," — ^sopus was as great 
an epicure, in his way, as Quin himself. It is related of him, that 
one day he dined oft" a costly dish of birds, the whole of which, 
when living, had been taught either to sing or speak, ^sopus 
was as fond of such a dish as his fellow-comedian, Quin, was of 
mullet ; for which, and for some other of his favourite morceaux, 
he used to say that a man ought to have a swallow as long as from 
London to Botany Bay, and palate all the way ! When the fish 



72 TABLE TRAITS. 

in question was in season, his first inquiry of the servant who used 
to awaken him was, " Is there any mullet' in the market this morn- 
ing, John?" and if John ref)lied in the negative, his master's 
reported rejoinder was, " Then call me at nine to-morrow, John." 

The Bedford coffee-house had its disadvantages, as when bullies, 
like Tiger Roach, endeavored to hold sovereignty over the mem- 
bers. But usurpers like the Tiger were deposed as easily by the 
cane as by the sword ; but such occurrences marred the peace of 
the coffee-house, nevertheless. It was, indeed, a strange company 
that sometimes was to be found within these houses. At Batem's, 
the City House, patronized by Blackmore, the brother of Lord 
Southwell was to be found enacting the parasite, and existing by 
the aid of men who thought his wit worth paying for. Child's 
Coffee-house, St. Paul's Church-yard, was patronized by the Clergy, 
who assembled there, especially the younger Clergy, in gowns, 
cassocks, and scarfs, smoked till they were invisible, and obtained 
the honorary appellation" of " Doctor " from the waiters. Clerical 
visitants were also to be found at the " Smyrna," in Pall Mall. 
Swift was often there with Prior ; and the politics of the day were 
so loudly discussed, that the chairman and porters in waiting out- 
side used to derive that sort of edification therefrom which is now 
to be had in all the cheap weekly periodicals. "Garraway's" 
takes us once more into the City. Garway, as the original pro- 
prietor was called, was one of the earliest sellers of tea in London ; 
and his house was frequented by nobles who had business in the 
City, who attended the lotteries at his house, or who wished to 
partake of his tea and coffee. Foreign Bankers and Ministers 
patronized "Robin's;" the buyers and sellers of Stocks collected at 
" Jonathan's ;" and the shipping interest went, as now, to "Lloyd's." 
All these places were in full activity of business and coffee-drinking in 
the reign of Queen Anne. Finally the lawyers crowded "Squire's," 
in Fulwood's Rents ; and there, it will be remembered. Sir Roger 
de Coverley smoked a pipe, over a dish of coffee, with the Spectator. 
But enough of these places, whose names are more familiar to us 
than their whereabout, but whose connexion with what may be 



THE OLD COFFEE HOUSES. 73 

called the table-life of past times gives me warrant for the notice 
of them, with which, perhaps, I have only troubled the reader. 
I will only add, that the ceremony of serving chocolate was never 
such a solemnity in England as in France. In the latter country, 
as late as the days of Louis XVI., a " man of condition " required 
no less than four footmen, each with two watches in his fob, accord- 
ing to the fashion, to help him to take a single cup of chocolate. 
One bore the tray, and one the chocolate-pot, a third presented 
the cup, and a fourth stood in waiting with a napMn ! — and all 
this coil to carry a morning draught to a poor wretch, whose red 
heels to his shoes were symbols of the rank which gave him the 
privilege of being helpless. 

The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for the critics, the 
politicians, and the fine gentlemen. Gay, writing to Congreve, in 
1715, says, "Amidst clouds of tobacco, at a coffee-house, I write 
this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will's. Moira has 
quitted for a coffee-house in the City ; and Titcomb is restored, to 
the great joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person 
to converse with upon the Fathers and church history. The 
knowledge I gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry ; 
and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him and Mr. 
Whiston." Pope learnt his astronomy by the assistance of what 
Moore calls, " the sun of the table ;" for, adding a postscript to 
Gay's letter to Congreve, he says, " I sit up till two o'clock, over 
Burgundy and Champagne." Ten years before, the coffee-house 
and London life had less charms for him. Witness the paragraph 
in the letter to Wycherley, in 1705, to this effect: I have now 
changed the scene from town to country, — from Will's coffee- 
house to Windsor Forest. I found no other difference than this 
betwixt the common town wits and the downright country fools, — 
that the first are partly in the wrong, with a little more flourish 
and gaiety ; and the last, neither in the right nor the wrong, but 
confirmed in a stupid settled medium, betwixt both." But, ten 
years later than the period of Pope's postscript to Congreve, in 
which he boasted of sitting over wine during the " wee short hours 
4 



74 TABLE TRAITS. 

ayont the twal'," as Burns calls them, we find tlie boaster stricken. 
Swift, writing to him, in 1726, remarks, "I always apprehend 
most for you after a great dinner ; for the least transgression of 
yours, if it be only two bits and one sup more than your stint, is 
a great debauch, for which you certainly pay more than those sots 
who are carried drunk to bed " 

In England, the chocolate and coffee-houses were not confined 
to the metropolis and its rather rakish inhabitants. The Univer- 
sities had their coffee-houses, as London had ; and the company 
there, albeit alumni of the various colleges, do not appear to have 
been remarkable for refinement. Dr. Ewins, at Cambridge, in the 
last century, acquired the ill-will both of Town and Gown for 
exercising a sort of censorship over their conduct. According to 
Cole, the Antiquary, they needed it ; for he says, with especial 
allusion to the Undergraduates, that " they never were more licen- 
tious, riotous, and debauched. They often broke the Doctor's 
windovf s," he adds, " as they said he had been caught listening on 
their staircases and (at their) doors." The Doctor, like his adver- 
saries, was in the habit of visiting the Union Coffee-house, opposite 
St. Radigimd's (or Jesus) lane, — a fashionable rendezvous. He was 
there one night about Christmas, lYYl, or January, 1772, "when 
some Fellow-Commoners, who owed him a grudge, sitting in a box 
near him, in order to affront him, pretended to call their dog 
' Squintum,' and frequently repeated the name very loudly in the 
coffee-house; and, in their jovialty, swore many oaths, and caressed 
their dog. Dr. Ewin, as did his father, squinted very much, as did 
Whitefield, the Methodist teacher, who was vulgarly called Dr. 
Squintum, from the blemish in his eyes. Dr. Ewin was sufliciently 
mortified to be so affronted in public. However, he carefully 
marked down the number of oaths sworn by these gentlemen, 
whom he made to pay severely the penalty of five shillings for 
each oath, which amounted to a good round sum." The next 
week, ballad-singers sang, in the streets of Cambridge, a ballad, 
which they gave away to all who would accept a copy, and from 
which the following verses are extracted. They will show — if 



THE OLD COFFEE HOUSES. To 

nothing else — tliat the University coffee-house poet was less elegant 
than Horace, and that the " well of English " into which he had 
dipped was not altogether " undefiled :" — 

" Of all the blockheads in the Town, 
That strut and bully up and down, 
And bring complaints agair^st the Gown, 

There's none like Dr. Squintum. 

" With gimlet eyes and dapper wig, 
This Justice thinks he looks so big ; 
A most infernal stupid gig 

Is this same Dr. Squintum, 

*' What pedlar can forbear to grin, 
Before his Worship that has been, 
To think what folly lurks within 

This Just Ass Dr. Squintum?" 

Old Rene d' Anion used to say, that, as soon as a man had 
breakfasted, it was his bounden duty to devote himself to the great 
business of the day, — think of dinner. "We will in some wise 
follow the instructions given, — first, however, saying a word or two 
upon French coffee-houses, and then upon those who naturally 
take precedence of " dinners," — the cooks by whom dinners are 
prepared. 



76 TABLE TEAITS. 



THE FRENCH CAFES. 



In the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than six hundred 
cafis in Paris. London, at the same j^eriod, could not count as 
many dozens. Under Louis Napoleon, the cafis have reached to 
the amazing number of between three and four thousand. All 
these establishments acknowledge the Cafe Procope as the founder 
of the dynasty, although, indeed, there were coffee-vendors in Paris 
before the time of the accomplished Sicilian. " Vixerunt fortes 
ante Agamemnonar 

The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period of the break- 
ing out of the Revolution, was something enormous. The French 
West-Indian Islands furnished eighty millions of pounds annually, 
and this was irrespective of what was derived from the East. The 
two sources together were not sufficient to supply the kingdom. 
Thence adulterations, fortunes to the adulterers, and that supremacy 
of chicory, which has destroyed the well-earned reputation of 
French coffee. 

I have already spoken of the Cafe Procope^ and here I will only 
add an anecdote illustrative of the scenes that sometimes occurred 
there, and of the national character generally in the reign of 
Louis XV. One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at 
his usual table, an officer of the King's Body-Guard entered, sat 
down, and ordered " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll," adding, 
"■ It will serve me for a dinner !" At this Saint Foix remarked 
aloud, that " a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was a confoun- 
dedly poor dinner." The officer remonstrated ; Saint Foix reiter- 
ated his remark, and again and again declared, that nothing the 
gallant officer could say to the contrary, would convince him that 
a cup of coffee with milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly poor 
dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the 
whole of the persons present adjourned as spectators of a fight 
which ended by St. Foix receiving a wound in the arm. " That is 
all very well," said the wounded combatant; "but I call you to 



THE FEUNCH CAFES. 77 

witness, gentlemen, that I am still profoundly convinced, that a 
cup of coiiee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor 
dinner!" At this moment, the principals vfere arrested, and 
carried be^re the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint Foix, 
without waiting to be questioned, said, " Monseigneur, I had not 
the slightest intention of offending the gallant officer, who, I 
doubt not, is an honourable man ; but Your Excellency can never 
prevent my asserting, that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, 
is a confoundedly poor dinner/' " Why, so it is," said the Duke. 
"Then I am not in the wrong," remarked St. Foix; "and a cup 
of coffee," at these words Magistrates, delinquents, and audi- 
tory, burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists became 
friends. It was a mo*e bloodless issue than that which occurred 
to Michel Lepelletier, in later years, at the Cafe Fevrier. He 
was seated at dinner there, when an ex-garde-du-corps, named 
Paris, approached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier who 
had voted for the death of Louis XVL, and, receiving an affirma- 
tive reply, drew forth a dagger, and smftly slew him on the spot. 
Before Procope, the Armenian, Pascal, sold coffee at the Fair 
of St. Germain, at three-halfpence a cup ; and the beverage was 
sung by the poet Thomas in terms not exactly like those with 
which Delille subsequently sang the virtues of the tree. The 
French coffee-houses at once gained the popularity to which they 
aspired. To Pascal succeeded Maliban, and then Gregoire opened 
his establishment in the Rue Mazarin, in the vicinity of players 
and play-goers. At the same time, there was a man in Paris, 
called " the lame Candiot," v/ho carried ready-made coffee about 
from door to door, and sold it for a penny per cup, sugar included. 
The cofe, at the foot of the bridge of JSTotre-Dame was founded by 
Joseph ; that at the foot of the bridge of St. Michel, by Etienne ; 
and both of these are more ancient than that of Procope, v/ho was 
the first, however, who made a fortune by his speculation. The 
Quai de VEcole had its establishment, (the Cafe Manoury^ which 
I believe still exists, as does the Cafe de la Begenice^ which dates 
from the time of the Regent Duke of Orleans, and where Rous- 



78 TA.BLE TEAITS. 

seau used to play at chess, and appear in liis Armenian costume. 
It was also frequented incog. ^ by the Emperor Joseph. The oldest 
cafi in the Palais Royal is the celebrated Caf& de Foy^ so called 
from the name of its founder. Carl Vernet was one of its most 
constant patrons. He was there on one occasion, when some 
repairs were going on, and, in his impatience, he flung a wet 
colouring brush from him, which struck the ceiling and left a spot. 
He immediately ascended the ladder, and with a touch of his 
finger converted the stain into a swallow; and his handy-work 
was still to be seen on the ceiling, when I was last in Paris. It 
was before the Cafe, de Foy that Camille Desmoulins harangued 
the mob, in July, 1*789, with such effect, that they took up arms, 
destroyed the Bastille, and inaugurated the^Revoiution. 

The Cafe, de Valois will long be remembered for its aristocratic 
character ; that of Montansier, on the other hand, was remarkable 
for the coarseness of its frequenters, and the violence with which 
they discussed politics, especially at the period of the Restoration. 
The Cafe du Caveau was more joyously noisy with its gay artists 
and broad songs. The Empire brought two establishments into 
popular favour, both of which appealed to the lovers of beauty as 
well as of coffee. The first was the Cafe du Bosquet^ and the 
second the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. Each was celebrated for the 
magnificent attractions of .the presiding lady, — the belle limo- 
nadiere, as she was at first called, or the dame du comptoir, as 
refinement chose to name her. Madame RomaiUj at the Mille 
Colonnes^ had a longer reign than her rival ; and the lady was 
altogether a more remarkable person. In the reign of Louis 
XVin., her seat was composed of the throne of Jerome, King of 
Westphalia, — which was sold by auction on the bankruiDtcy of his 
Majesty. Madame Remain descended from it like a weary Queen, 
to take refuge in a nunnery ; and, curiously enough, the ex-King 
has recovered his " throne," which now figures, in the reduced 
aspect of a simple arm-chair, in the salon of his residence at the 
Palais Royal. After the abdication of Madame Remain, the 
Ifille Colonnes endeavoured to secure success by very meretricious 



THE TEENCH CAFES. Iv 

means. Girls of a bra sen quality of beauty bore tbrougb tbe 
apartments flaming bowls of punch, usually taken after the coffee ; 
and the beverage and the bearers were equally bad. 

As tke Cafe Chretien was once thoroughly Jacobin, so the Cafe 
Lemhlin became entirely imperial, and was the focus of the Oppo- 
sition after the return of the Bourbons. It was famous for its 
chocolate, as well as for its coffee. "When the allies were at 
Paris, it was hardly safe for the officers to enter the Cafe Lemhlin, 
and many scenes of violence are described as having occurred 
there, and many a duel was fought with fatal effect, after a cafe, 
dispute between French and foreign officers, — and all for national 
honour. The Bourbon officers were far more insulting in the 
cafes to the ex-imperial "braves," than the latter were to the 
invading captains, — and they generally paid dearly for their 
temerity. Finally, — ^for to name all the cafes in Paris, would 
require an encyclopaBdia, — it is worthy of notice that Tortoni's, 
which is now a grave adjunct to the Bourse^ first achieved success 
by the opposite process of billiard- playing. A broken-down pro- 
vincial advocate, Spolar of Rennes, came to Paris with a bad 
character, and a capital cue; and the latter he handled so 
wonderfully at the Cafe Tortoni, that all Paris went to witness 
his feats. Talleyrand patronized him, backed his playing, and 
gained no inconsiderable sum by the cue-driving of Spolar, whose 
star culminated when he was appointed " Professor of Billiards to 
Queen Hortense," — an appointment which sounds strange, but 
which was thought natural enough at the time ; and, considering 
all things, so it was. 

There is one feature in the French cafes which strikes an 
observer as he first contemplates it. I allude to the intensity, 
gravity, and extent of the domino-playing. A quartett party 
will spend half the evening at this mystery, with nothing to 
enliven it but the gentlest of conversation, and the lightest of 
beer, or a simple petit ven-e. The Government wisely thinks that 
a grave domino-player can be given to neither immorality nor 
conspiracies. But a British Government proudly scorns to tole- 



80 TABLE TEAITS. 

rate such insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen, at the end 
of the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blasphemy, and get as 
drunk as they please, in any London tavern, provided they do not 
there\Yith break the peace ; hut^ let the reprobates only remain 
obstinately sober, and play at dominoes, then they offend the 
immaculate justice of Justices, and landlords and players are lia- 
ble to be fined. Lo, on Sabbath nights, the working-classes have 
thrown open to their edification the gin-palaces, vy^hich invite not 
in vain ; but if one of these same classes should, on the same 
Sunday evening, knock at the religiously-closed door of a 
so-called free library, the secretary's maid who answers the appeal 
would be pale v^ith horror at the atrocity of the applicant. And 
what is the bewildered Briton to do ? He looks in at church, 
where, if there be a few free seats, they have a look about them 
so as to make him understand that he is in his fustian, and that 
he and the miserable sinners in their fine cloth are not on an 
equality in the house of God ; and so he turns sighingly away, 
and goes where the law allows him, — to the house of gin. 

But, leaving the further consideration of these matters to my 
readers, let us now address ourselves to the sketching of a class 
w^hose most illustrious members have borne witness to their owq 
excellency, not exactly according to the fashion spoken of by 
Shakspeare; namely, by putting a strange face on their own 
perfection. 



THE AI^CIEIiTT COOK, AND HIS AET. 81 



THE Al^CIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 

It is an incontestable fact, that lie who lives soberly does not 
depend upon his cook for the pleasure which he derives from his 
repast. Nevertheless, the cook is one of the most important of 
personages ; and even appetite, without him, would not be of the 
value that it is at present. A great artiste knows his vocation. 
"When the cook of Louis XVIH. was reproached, by His Majesty's 
Physician, with ruining the royal health by savoury juices, the 
dignitary of the kitchen sententiously remarked, that it was the 
office of the cook to supply His Majesty with pleasant dishes, and 
that it was the duty of the doctor to enable the King to digest 
them. The division of labour, and the responsibilities of office, 
could not have been better defined. 

From old times the cook has had a proper sense of the solemn 
importance of his wonderful art. The Coquus Gloriosus^ in a 
fragment of Philemon, shows us what these artists were in the 
very olden time. He swears by Minerva that he is delighted at 
his success, and that he cooked a fish so exquisitely, that it 
returned him admiring and grateful looks from the frying-pan ! 
He had not covered it with grated cheese, not disguised it with 
sauce ; but he had treated it with such daintiness and delicacy, 
that, even, when fully cooked, it lay on the dish as fresh-looking 
as if it had just been taken from the lake. This result seems to 
have been a rarity ; for, when the fish was served up at table, the 
delighted guests tore it from another, and a running struggle was 
kept up around the board to get possession of this exquisitely 
prepared morceau. " And yet," says the cook, " I had nothing 
better to exhibit my talent upon than a wretched river fish, nou- 
rished in mud. But, Jupiter Saviour ! if I had only had at my 
disposal some of the fish of Attica or Argos, or a conger from 
pleasant Sicyon, like those which Neptune serves to the gods in 
Olympus, why, the guests would have thought they had become 
4^% 



82 TABLE TEAITS. 

divinities themselves. " Yes," adds tlie culinary boaster, " I think 
I may say that I have discovered the principle of immortality, and 
that the odour of my dishes would recall life into the nostrils of 
the very dead." The resonant vaunt is not unlike that of Becha- 
mel, who said that, with the sauce he had invented, a man would 
experience nothing but delight in eating his own grandfather ! 

Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the genus coquorum 
of his days. In a dialogue between Syrus and his chef, the master 
declares that the culinary art appears to have reached its limit, 
and that he would fain hear something novel upon the subject. 
The cook's reply admits us to an insight into ancient manners. 
" I am not one of those fellows," says the personage in question, 
" who are content to suppose that they learn their art by wearing 
an apron for a couple of years. My study of the art has not been 
superficial : it has been the work of my life ; and I have learned 
the use and appliances of every herb that grows — for kitchen pur- 
poses. But I especially shine in getting up funeral dinners. When 
the mourners have returned from the doleful ceremony, it is I who 
introduce them to the mitigated afSiction department. While 
they are yet in their mourning attire, I lift the lids of my kettles, 
•and straightway the weepers begin to laugh. They sit down with 
their senses so enchanted, that every guest fancies himself at a 
wedding. If I can only have all I require, Syrus," adds the artist, 
" if my kitchen be only properly furnished, you will see renewed 
the scenes which used to take place on the coasts frequented by 
the Syrens. It will be impossible for any one to pass the door ; 
all who scent the process will be compelled, despite themselves, to 
stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils 
extended ; nor will it be possible to make them ' move on,' unless 
the police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent by 
plugging their noses." 

Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing his 
pupils. Leucon is the name of the teacher ; and the first truth he 
impresses on his young friend is, that the most precious sauce for 
the purpose of a cook is impudence. "Boast away," he says, 



THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 83 

" and never be tired of it." For, as lie logically remarks, "if there 
be many a Captain under whose dragoon-embossed cuirass lies a 
poor bare, why should not we, who kill hares, pass for better than 
we are, like the Captains ? " A modest cook must be looked on," 
he says, " as a contradiction in nature. If he be hired out to cook 
a dinner in another man's house, he will only get considered in 
proportion to his impudence and overbearing conduct. If he be 
quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook." 

Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, 
that in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely 
on those who exercise the art ; there must be others who possess 
the science of enjoyment. This is true ; and Alexis further adds, 
that the guest who keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who sud- 
denly demands it before its time, are alike enemies to the art 
which Alexis professes. 

The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, 
among the Sybarites, — the people to whom the crumpling of a 
rose under the side on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They 
were as self-luxurious as though the world was made for them 
alone, and they and the world were intended to last for ever. They 
would not admit into their city any persons whose professions 
entailed noise in the practice of them : the trunkmaker at the 
corner of St. Paul's would have been flogged to death with thistle- 
down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for an hour, and 
if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to wield 
the instrument of execution ! The crowing of one of the pro- 
scribed race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into 
fits ; and, on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his 
nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring 
men in another country strike against each other, at their work, 
the friend was so overcome, that he merely exclaimed, " Good 
gracious !" and fainted away. 

Athenseus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the 
authors whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruc- 
tion of which by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his 



84: TABLE TEAITS. 

" Finger of God," is a circumstance at which he is rather glad 
than sorry, — Athenseus mentions the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, 
where he was invited to one of the public dinners, at which the 
citizens ate very black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. 
Having tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the Sybaritic 
expression for " Stap my vitals !" and convulsively remarked, that 
" he no longer wondered why the Lacedaemonians sought death in 
battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with such 
broth I" 

Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another 
quality. The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the bene- 
factors of their country, and the cook who had distinguished him- 
self was invested with a golden crown, and an opera ticket ; that 
is, free admission to those public games where hired dancers 
voluptuously perverted time and the human form divine. 

I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indif- 
ferent reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. 
The comic Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, 
impressing upon a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in 
houses where they were hired to cook dinners. The instruction is 
worthy of Professor Fagan of the Saffron-Hill University. "What- 
ever you can prig," says the elder rogue, " belongs to yourself, as 
long as you are in the house. When you get past the porter into 
the street, it then becomes my property. So fake away ! (Qddi^e 
devp dfia,) and look out for unconnected trifles." 

And yet Athenseus asserts that nothing has so powerfully con- 
tributed to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery ! 
His proof is, that when men devoured each other, they were 
beasts, — which is a self-evident proposition ; but that when they 
took to cooked meats, and were particular with regard to these, 
why, then alone they began to live cleanly, — which is a proposition 
by no means so self-evident. In his opinion, a man to be supremely 
happy only needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora, — -a good appetite, 
and an irreproachable indigestion. These are, doubtless, great 
portions of happiness; and if felicity can do withoi^t thenj,— r 



THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 85 

wliicli is questionable, — where they are .not, comfort is absent, and 
a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation. 

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedsemon was their pur- 
gatory. They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and 
plump children were legally condemned to get spare again upon 
their gruei. The Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper 
place in society. He might still be a slave, and so were greater 
men than he ; but he was the confidant of his master, and there 
were not a few who would have exchanged their liberty for such a 
post and chains. And who dare affirm that the coquus was not 
an officer of distinction ? He who knows how to prepare food for 
digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one particular at least, 
than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary science than 
turning the spit ; than Ulysses, who could light fires and lay cloths 
with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter ; or than Patroclus, who 
could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to 
make a stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of ITapier. 

When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the g-randfather of 
Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, 
it is thereby further intimated that good eating should be followed 
by good drinking. 

We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations 
on eternal flames by the heat of their own fires : so Timachidas, 
of Rhodes, made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both 
after a fashion to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was 
the Dr. Johnson of his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for 
the benefit of students. Sicily especially was celebrated for its 
literary cooks, and Mithoecus wrote a treatise on the art ; while 
Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes and efiects, medi- 
tated on stomachs as well as sauces, and first showed how diges- 
tion might be taught to wait on appetite. Then theoretical laymen 
came in to the aid of the practical cook, and gastronomists hit 
upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoyments. 
Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the tongue, in order 
that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than other guests, 



Sb - TAELE TEAITS. 

who wisely preferred ratter to slowly please the palate than sud- 
denly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that it is 
related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing 
it with a piece of rough fish-sMn ; and his taldng up hot viands 
vfith his hand, like that of Gotz von Berlichingen, encased in a 
glove, is cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons 
of the Romans had a ]3ointed end, at the extremity of the handle, 
for the purpose of picking fish from the shell. 

Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature's 
making, they were made for them by the cooks ; and the latter, in 
return, were crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten 
largely, and had no fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new 
dish had a patent for its exclusive preparation for a year. But ere 
that time it had probably been forgotten in something more novel 
discovered by a Sicilian rival ; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as 
the Parisians of the last century used to look on Languedoc, — as 
the only place on earth where cooks were born and bred, and were 
worth the paying. The artists of both countries, and of the oppo- 
site ages mentioned, were especially skilled in the preparation of 
materials which were made to appear the things they were not ; 
and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, was really 
fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the kitchen garden. 
The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste of which 
the diarists of the last century show the French to have been 
guilty ; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, 
placed upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tol- 
erated, but an artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be 
very intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, 
who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who could make very little 
of the deal before them. 

In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had her especial 
altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in which the Sicilian 
cooks were held, who prayed to her for inspiration. Her minis- 
ters were paid salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. Some- 
thing like ^£800 per annum formed the honorarium of the learned 



THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 87 

and juicy gentleman. But he was not.-alvrays to be had, even at 
that price ; and the disgusted Languedocien who would not remain 
in the cuisine of the Duke of Richmond, when Governor of Ireland, 
for the sufficient reason that there was no Opera in Dublin, had 
his prototype among his Sicilian predecessors. The jealousy of the 
culinary bondsman in Greek households against the free cook from 
Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in its results. 

The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to w^hom his 
master Antony gave a city, because he had cooked a repast which 
had called forth encomium from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra. 

But money was the last thing thought of by the wearied epi- 
cures of Rome, especially when what they gave belonged to some- 
body else. When LucuUus spent £1,000 sterling on a snug 
dinner for three, — himself, Csesar, and Pompey, — he doubtless 
spent his creditors' money ; at least, extravagant people generally 
do. Claudius dined often with six hundred guests, and the Roman 
people paid the cooks. The dinners of Vitellius cost that sacrile- 
gious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills were discharged 
by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius ordered several 
thousands sterling to be bestowed on the author of a piece 
wherein everything eatable was made to speak wittily, the author 
was really paid out of the popular pocket ; and when Geta insisted 
on having as many courses at each repast as there were letters in 
in the alphabet, and all the viands at each course so named that 
their initials shonld be the same as that of the course itself, he was 
the last person to trouble himself about the payment for such, 
extravagance. 

The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, have 
been as despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in the saloon. 
The slaves there, who hurried to and fro, bearing their tributes of 
good things from the market-place, or distributing them according 
to his bidding, obeyed the cook's very nod, nay, anticipated his 
very wishes. They were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sove- 
reign. The cook was their Lord paramount. The stewards pos- 
sessed no little power ; but when the fires were lighted, and the 



05 TABLE TEAITS. 

dinner had to be thought of, the head cook was the kitchen Jupi- 
ter ; and when he spoke, obedience, silence, and trembling followed 
upon his word. 

From his raised platform, the Archimagirus^ as he was called, 
could overlook all the preparations, and with his tremendous spoon 
of office he could break the heads of his least skilful disciples, and 
taste the sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The effect 
must have been quite pantomimic ; and to complete it, there was 
only wanted a crash of discordant music to accompany the rapid 
descent of the gigantic spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. 
The work was done in presence of the gods, and scullions blew 
the fires under the gaze of the Lares, — sooty divinities to whom, 
the legend says, inferior cooks were sometimes sacrificed in the 
month of December. " But," as Othello says, " that's a fable !" 

Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and perhaps 
were as often inspected by the curious and privileged^ as that of 
tho»Refprm Club. " Order reigned " there quite as much as it did, 
according to Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject 
slavery. Art and costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but 
the human beings there were exactly the things that were made 
the least account of. 

No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook consisted in 
serving up an entire pig at once roasted and boiled. The elder 
Disraeli has shown from Archestratus how this was done. " The 
animal had been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, 
whence, after copious efiusion, the master -cook extracted the 
entrails, washed them with wine, and hanged the animal by the 
feet. He crammed down the throat the stuffings already prepared. 
Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley 
thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on a 
heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due 
care. When the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and 
then, taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once 
boiled and roasted." And such was the way by which the best 
of cooks spoiled the best of pigs. 

According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in the old 



THE A:N^CIENT cook, and ins ART. 89 

days to cany knives in their girdles. In the ^'' Auhtlaria" old 
Euclio says to Congrio, the cook, '■^ Ad tres vivos jam ego deferam 
tuum nomeii^^^ — " I'll go and inform against you to the Magis- 
trates."' " Yv4iy so V asks Congrio. " Because you carry a knife," 
— " Quia cultrum habes" " Well," says the artist, standing on 
his rights, '■'■ cocum decet^'' "it is the sign of my profession." From 
another of the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the " Mencech- 
7nei,^^ that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was reckoned 
as equivalent to that of eight guests ; and when Cylindrus is ordered 
to prepare a dinner for Mensechmus, his " lady," and the oificial para- 
site, " Then," says the cook, " that's as good as ten ; for your parasite 
does the work of eight :" — 

" Ja7n isti sunt decern, 
JVani parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur.''^ 

The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly as the 
parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the " Mostellariap that he 
lives on the best the cooks and vintners can procure for him, — a 
real fiddler's destiny : — 

" Musice hercle agitis mtatem : ita ut vos decet. 
Viiio et victu, piscatu probe electili, 
Viiam colitis." 

Stalino complains in the " Casina,^'' that, clever as cooks are, 
they cannot put a little essence of love into all their dishes, — a 
sauce, he says, that would please everybody. Their reputation in 
Rome for stealing v/as much the same as that enjoyed by their 
Grecian brethren. The scene of the " Casina,''^ indeed, is in 
Athens ; but Olympio utters a Roman sentiment when he 
says, that cooks use their hands as much for larceny as cookery, 
and that wherever they are they bring double ruin, through extra- 
vagance and robbeiy, upon their masters : " ITbi sunt, duplici 
damno dominos multcmt.'^^ This is further proved by the speech 
of Epidicus, in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook speaks 
of his master's purse as if it were game, to disembowel which, he 
says, he will use his professional kmfe : — 



90 TABLE TEAITS. 

" Acutmn cultrum habeo^ senis qui exenterem- 

MarsupiumJ^ 

We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech of one 
of the craft, in the '•'■ Pseudolusy Ballio, seeing a single practi- 
tioner remaining in the square to be hired, asks how it is that he 
has not been engaged. " Eloquar^'' says the cook, " here is the 
reason : — 

" He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks, 
No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest, 
But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works. 
Therefore you see me here alone to-day. 
A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased; 
But under a crown I cook a dish for no man. 
For 'twixt the common herd and me, you see, 
Tliere is a diff 'rence ; they iato a dish 
Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat. Sir, 
As though they were but oxen out at grass. 
Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with grass ; 
And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel, 
Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks and greens, 
All go together, widi a pound of benzoin, 
And mustard ditto, that compels the tears 
From out the eyes of those that have to mix it. 

l.t men are short-lived now, the reason's plain: 

They put death into their stomachs, and so 

Of indigestion and bad cookery die. 

Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder; 

Yet men would eat what asses would not bend to. 

Who of my dishes eats, obtains at least 

Two hundred happy years of life renew'd. 

I season Neptune's fishes with a juice 

Made up of Cicilindrum, Muscadel, 

Sipolindrum, and Sancapatides. 

The odour of my mutton, nicely stuffed 

With Cicimandrum, Nappalopsides, 

And of Cataractaria a pinch, 

Feeds Jupiter himself, wh6, when I rest, 

Sleeps on Olympus, sad and supperless. 



THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART. 91 

As for mj potions, he who deeply drinks, 

Gulps with the draught the gift of endless youth." 

Finally after inventing the above names unpronounceable of 

sauces that do not exist, the boaster adds, that his fee is a crown, 

provided he is not overlooked ; but that if there be supervision to 

check him in his perquisites, he is not to be hired under a 

mina : — 

" Si credis, nummos; si non, ne mina quidem /" 

I do not know if cooks more especially used different fingers in 
mingling their sauces, according as they were employed on wed- 
ding banquets, martial feasts, senatorial entertainments, al-fresco 
dejeuners^ or commercial suppers ; but certain it is, that the fingers 
were sacred to diverse deities. The thumb was devoted to Venus, 
the index finger to Mars, the longest finger to Saturn, the next to 
the Sim, and the little finger to Mercury. 

I conclude with a remark that I hope will be gratifying to all 
culinary artists who respect themselves and their calling, and who 
are anxious to prove that their vocation is of ancient and honour- 
able descent. Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, had 
formerly been cook to the King of Sidon. Thus learning ascend- 
ed to us from the kitchen ; and to the ex-cook of the King of Sidon 
we perhaps owe all the epics that have ever been written. By this 
genealogy, even " Paradise Lost " may be traced to the patties of 
Cadmus. But cooks in England may boast of a rtohlesse de cuisine^ 
Avhich dates from the IsTorman Conquest. When William, who 
wooed his wdfe Matilda by knocking her down, had established 
himself in England, he gave a banquet, at which his cook, Tezelin, 
served a new^ white soup of such exquisite flavour, that William 
sent for the artist, and inquired its name. " I call it Dillegrout^^'' 
said Tezelin. " A scurvy name for so good a soup," said the Con- 
queror; "but let that pass. We make you Lord of the Manor of 
Addington !" Thus modern cooks m^y boast of a descent from 
the landed aristocracy of the Conquest ! Some of their masters 
cannot do as much ; and this, perhaps, accounts for the pride of 
the one, and the simplicity of the other. 



92 TABLE TKAITS. 



THE MODERN COOK AND HIS SCIENCE. 

If it were necessary tliat the cook of the ancient world should 
be a Sicilian, and that the cuisinier of the ancient regime should 
be of Languedoc, (the native place of ^'•hlanc manger^'') so in 
these modern times he alone is considered a true graduate in the 
noble science de la gueule who is a Gaul by birth, or who has 
gone through his studies in the University of French Kitchens. 
In England, it must be confessed that great cooks have formed the 
exception rather than the rule ; and that our native culinary litera- 
ture, however interesting in certain national details, is chiefly based 
upon a French foundation. And yet we may boast of some native 
professors who were illustrious in their way. Master John Murrel, 
for instance, v/rote a cookery book in 1630, and dedicated it to 
the daughter of the Lord Mayor. He starts by asserting that 
cookery books generally mar rather than make good meats ; and 
then shows what good meats were in his estimation, by teaching 
how to dress " minced bullock's kidney, a rack of veal, a farced 
leg of mutton, an umble pie, and a chewit of stockfish." He is 
succulently eloquent on a compound production, consisting of 
marrow-bones, a leg of mutton, fowls and pullets, and a dozen 
larks, all in one dish. 

The Duke of Newcastle, in the last century, had a female cook 
of some renown, named " Chloe." General Guise, at the siege of 
Carthagena, saw some wild fowl on the wing, and amid the din of 
war, he thought of " Chloe " and her sauces. She was famous for 
her stewed mushrooms, and there is an anecdote connected there- 
with that v/ill bear repeating. " Poor Dr. Shaw," writes Horace 
Walpole, " being sent for in great haste to Claremont, (it seems 
the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own 
whisker getting up her nose, and making her sneeze,) the poor 
Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, 
was taken so ill that he was forced to stop at Kingston ; and, be- 



THE MODEEN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 93 

ing carried to the first apothecary's, prescribed a medicine for 
himself which immediately cm-ed him. This catastrophe so 
alarmed the Duke of I^ewcastle, that he immediately ordered all 
the mushroom-beds to be destroyed ; and even the toad-stools in 
the park did not escape scalping in this general measure. And a 
voice of lamentatioji was heard at Eamah in Claremont, ' Chloe ' 
weeping for her mushrooms and they are not !" But, let us turn 
to trace lightly the genealogy of the cooks of modern times. 

The descent of the barbarians from the north was the ruin of 
cooks as well as Kings, of kitchens as well as of constitutions. Many 
of the cooks of the classic period were slain like the Druid Priests 
at the fire of their own altars. A patriotic few fled rather than 
feed the invader ; and the servile souls who tremblingly offered to 
prepare ?ii fricassee of ostrich brains for the Northmen, were dis- 
missed with contempt by warrior princes, who lived on under-done 
beef, and very much of it ! 

But as sure as the Saxon blood beats out the Norman, so does 
good cookery prevail over barbarous appetites. The old cooks 
were a sacred race, whose heirs took up the mission of their sires. 
The mission was so far triumphant, that, at the period of Charle- 
magne, the imperial kitchen recognised in its chef the representa- 
tive of the Emperor. The oriental pheasant and the peacock, in 
all the glories of expanded tail, took the place, or appeared at the 
side, of coarser viands. The dignity and the mirth of Charle- 
magne's table were heightened by the presence of ladies. Brillat 
de Savarin states, that since that period the presence of the fair 
sex has ever been a law of society. But in this he errs ; for the 
Marquis de Bouille, in his admirable work on the Dukes of Guise, 
affirms that the good ci^'ilizing custom had fallen into disuse, but 
that a permanent improvement was commenced in the reign of 
Francis I., when the Cardinal of Lorraine induced that Monarch 
to invite ladies to be present at ail entertainments given at Court. 
Society followed the fashion of the Sovereign ; and as it used to 
be said, " No feast, no Levite," so now it was felt that where there 
was no lady, there was no refined enjoyment. 



94 TABLE TRAITS. 

At whatever period tlie emancipation of the ladies from their 
forced seclusion took place, from that period the tone of social 
life was elevated. They went about, like Eve, "on hospitable 
thoughts intent." The highest in rank did not disdain to super- 
vise the kitchen ; they displayed their talents in the invention of 
new dishes, as well as in the preparation of *the old ; and they 
occasionally well-nigh ruined their lords by the magnificence of 
their tastes, and their sublime disregard of expense. All the 
sumptuary laws of Kings to restrain this household extravagance 
were joyously evaded, and banquets became deadly destructive to 
men's estates. 

The French Kings granted corporate rights to the different 
trades connected with the kitchen and the table ; and perhaps the 
most valued privilege was that conceded by Charles IX. to the 
pastry-cooks, who alone were permitted to make bread for the ser- 
vice of the Mass. 

Montaigne, in his pleasant way, recounts a conversation he had 
with an Italian chef who had served in the kitchen of Cardinal 
Caraffa, up to the period of the death of his gastronomic Emin- 
ence. " I made him," says the great Essayist, " tell me something 
about his post. He gave me a lecture on the science of eating, 
with a gravity and magisterial countenance as if he had been 
determining some vexed question in theology. He deciphered to 
me, as it were, the distinction that exists between appetites : — the 
appetite at fasting; that which people have at the end of the 
second or third service ; the means of awaking and exciting it ; 
the general ' police,' so to speak, of his sauces ; and then particu- 
larized their ingredients and effects. The differences of salads, 
according to the seasons, he next discoursed upon. He explained, 
what sorts ought to be prepared warm, and those which should 
always be served cold ; the way of adorning and embellishing 
them, in order to render them seductive to the eye. After this he 
entered on the order of table-services, — a subject full of fine and 
important considerations ; and all this was puffed up with rich and 
magnificent terms; phrases, indeed, such as are employed by 



-THE MODEEK COOK, AND HIS SCIENGE. 95 

statesmen and diplomatists, when they are discoursing on the 
government of an empire." We see by this what the " art de la 
(jueule " was in the days of Charles IX., whose mother, Catherine 
de Medicis, had introduced it into France, as a science whereby 
men should enjoy life. The same lady introduced also poisoning, 
as a science whereby men might be deprived of life. Her own 
career was full of opposing facts like these, j-facts which caused a 
poetic cook to write the epitaph upon her, which says : — 

" Here lieth a Queen, who was angel and devilj 
Admirer of good, and a doer of evil : 
She supported the State, and the State she destroyed 5 
She reconciled friends, and she friendships alloyed 5 
She brought forth three Kings, thrice endangered the CrowD; 
Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down ; 
Made many good laws, many bad ones as well, 
And merited richly both heaven and hell." 

The mention of Cardinal de Caratfa, by Montaigne, reminds me 
that, for a gastronome, the Cardinal was singularly sanguinary in 
spirit. I know no one to compare with him, except Dr. Cahill, 
who is not averse to good living, and who has earned so gloomy 
a notoriety by his terrible sentiment of the massacre of Protest- 
ants being " a glorious idea." Caraffa was enabled to enjoy both 
his propensities, of swallowing good things and slaughtering here- 
tics. "Having obtained leave from the Pope to establish the 
Inquistion at Rome, at a time when the resources of the State ran 
low, he turned his private property to the use of his zeal, and set 
up a small Inquisition at his own expense." Thus he could dine 
within hearing of the groans of his victims ; his cook could inform 
him that the hares and heretics had both been roasted ; and he 
may have been occasionally puzzled to know whether that smell 
of burning came from the patties or the Protestants. 

The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in France ; but 
they had a passion for poetry as well as for pies, and were given 
to let their sauces burn while they recited whole pages of " Orlando 



90 TABLE TEAIT3. 

Furioso." Tliey were critics as well .as cooks, and the IdtclieRs 
resounded with their denunciations of all who objected to t]ie 
merits of the divine Ariosto. But even the Papal ennobling of a 
cook could not compensate for an indifferent dinner ; and though 
Leo X., in a fit of modest delight at a sauce made by his cook 
during Lent, named him from that circumstance " Jack o' Lent," 
or '•'■Jean de Careme^'' the French would not allow that such an 
event authorized the artiste to be dreaming over epics, when he 
should be wide awake to the working of his proper mystery. But 
the mystery itself was much obstructed by the political events of 
the times. There were the bloody wars of the Guises, the troubles 
of the League, the despotic reign of Richelieu, the cacochymical 
temperament (as the editor of the '"''Ahnanach des Gourmands'^'' 
would call it) of Louis XIIL, and the ridiculous war of the Fronde. 
The glory of the French kitchen rose with that of the Grand 
Monarque^ and Vatel and Louis XIV. were contemporaries. Vatel 
slew himself to save his honour ! The King had come to dine 
with Conde: but the cod had not arrived in time to be dressed 
for the King, and thereupon the heroic artist fell upon his sword, 
like an ancient Roman, and is immortalized for ever by his glo- 
rious folly ! 

But there was nothing really heroic in the death, of Vatel, 
whose sword was pointed at his breast by wounded vanity. Far 
more heroic was the death of the cook of the Austrian Consul, in 
the late cruel massacre, by the cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. 
The Consul's cook v/as a young woman of thirty years of age. 
The Muscovite murderers were at the very height of their bloody 
enjoyment, and sending shots into the town, when the cook 
attempted to cross a garden, to procure some herbs ; for Consuls 
must dine, though half the world be dying. She had performed 
her mission, and was returning, when a thirty-six pounder shot cut 
her completely in two. Rather than give up the parsley for her 
master's soup, she thus encountered death. What was Vatel and 
his bodkin, to this more modern cook and the thirty-six pounder, 
loaded by the Czar for her destruction ? 



THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 97 

The cooks "looked up" in the nights and suppers of the Regency, 
and the days and dinners of Louis XV. It would be difficult to 
say whether under the Regent, or under the King, the culinary art 
and its professors most- flourished. I am inclined, however, to 
think, that, during the tranquil and voluptuous period of the reign 
of Louis XV., the cooks of France rose to that importance from 
which they have never descended. They became a recognised and 
esteemed class in society, whose spoiled children they were ; and 
in return, it was very like spoiled children that they behaved. But 
how could it be otherwise, when the noble, the brave, and the fair 
girded aprons to their loins, and stood over stew-pans, with the air 
of alchymists over alembics ? It is to the nobility and other dis- 
tinguished persons in high life, yet not noble, in France, that gas- 
tronomy owes many a dish, whose very name betrays to ecstasy. 
And here are a few of these droll benefactors of mankind. 

The Marquis de Bechamel immortalized his name, in the reign 
of Louis XIV.j by his invention of cream-sauce, for turbot and 
cod. Madame de Maintenon imagined the " cutlets in curl- 
papers " which go by her name, and which her ingenuity created 
in order to guar^ the sacred stomach of the Grand Monarque 
from the grease which he could not digest. The " Chartreuse a 
la Mauconseil " is the work, and the most innocent one, of the 
free and easy Marchioness of that name. A woman more free 
and easy still, the Duchess of Villeroy, (Marechale de Luxem- 
bourg,) produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known as 
the poulets a la Villeroy. They were eaten with bread a la 
Regent^ of which the author was the roue Duke of Orleans. His 
too "well-beloved" daughter, the Duchess of Berry, had a 
gastronomic turn of mind, like her illustrious father. She was an 
epicurean lady, who tasted of ' all the pleasures of life without 
moderation, whose device was, " Short and sweet," and who was 
contented to die young, seeing that she had exhausted all enjoy- 
ment, and had achieved a renown, that should embalm her name 
for ever, as the inventor of the filets de lapereau. The gigot a la 
Mailly was the result of much study, on the part of the first 
6 



98 TABLE TEAITS. 

mistress of Louis XV., to rid herself of a sister who was a rival. 
Madame de Pompadour, another of the same King's "ladies," 
testified her gratitude for the present which the Monarch made 
her of the Chateau de Bellevue, by the production of the filets 
de volaille a la Bellevue. The Queen of Louis was more devout, 
but not less epicurean, than his mistresses ; and the petites bou- 
chees a la Heine, if they were not of her creating, were named in 
honour of Maria Leczinzka. Louis himself had a contempt for 
female cooks ; but Madame" Du Barry had one so well-trained, 
that with a charming dinner of coulis de faisans, croustades de la 
foie de lottes, salmis de hecassine, pain de volaille a la supreme, 
poularde au cresson, ecrevisses au vin de Sauterne, bisquets de 
peches au Noyau, and cr&nie de cerneaux, the King was so over- 
come with ecstasy, that, after recovering from the temporary 
disgust he experienced at hearing that it was the handywork of a 
woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring upon her the 
cordon bleu, — which phrase, from that time, has been accepted as 
signifying a skilled female cook. 

With respect to other dishes and their authors, the vol au vent 
a la Nesle owns a Marquis for its father ; and ^he poularde a la 
Montmorency is the offspring of a Duke. The Bayannoise, or 
the Mabonnoise rather, recalls one of the victories of the Duke de 
Richelieu ; and veau a la Montgolfier, well inflated, was the 
tribute of a culinary artist to the hero who first rode the air at 
the tail of a balloon. The sorbet a la Donizetti was the master- 
piece of the Italian confectioner of the late Duke of Beaufort. 
He had been to the Opera ; and one of the composer's charming 
airs having given him an idea, he brooded over it, till an hour or 
so before dawn, it was hatched into reality, when he rushed to 
the Duke's bed-chamber, and, "drawing Priam's bed curtains in 
the night," announced to his startled Grace the achievement of a 
new sorbet. 

The tendrons d''agneaux om soleil, and the filets de poulets a la 
Pompadour, were two of the dishes invented by the famous lady 
of that name. The carbonnade a la Soubise, and the carre de veau 



THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 99 

a la Guemenee, date — the first from the reign of Louis XY., the 
last from that of Louis XVI., — periods when the people were 
famishing. The Pompadour was a great patron of the arts, and 
especially of the culinary art ; and the cuisine des petits apparte- 
mcnts, during her reign, was at the very height of its savoury 
reputation. The Prince of Soubise was a poor General, but a 
rich glutton; and his son-in-law, the Prince de Guemenee, was 
famous for his invention of various ragouts, his inordinate extrava- 
gance, and his bankruptcy, with liabilities against him amounting 
to twenty-eight millions of francs. Madame la Marechale de 
Mirepoix was the authoress of cailles a la Mlrepoix; and her 
descendants live on the reputation acquired thereby by their 
epicurean ancestress. The Bourbons vied with the aristocracy in 
taxing their genius, and cudgelling their brains, in order to pro- 
duce new dishes. Thus, the potage a laXavier was the production 
of Louis XVIII., in the days of his early manhood ; while the 
soupe a la Conde was a rival dish invented by his princely cousin, 
— a cousin, by the way, who, when a refugee in England, used to 
pass his evenings at Astley's, with his pockets full of apples, 
which he gallantly presented to ladies as highly, but not as 
naturally, coloured as the fruit. Perhaps the reputation of the 
Marechal de Richelieu rests more on his houdins a la carpe, than 
on his battles and billets-doux. Finally, a mysterious obscurity 
conceals from us the name of the inventor of the petites bouchees 
de foie gras. He is the Junius of gastronomic literature ; but if 
he be guessed at in vain, he is blessed abundantly, as one who has 
concentrated paradise, (an Epicurean's paradise,) and given an 
antepast thereof, in a single mouthful. 

The Prince de, Soubise was famous in the reign of Louis XV. 
for giving great dinners, and paying nobody but his cooks, and 
the young ladies of the opera. He once varied his extravagance 
by a splendid f^te, which was to terminate by a supper. His. chef 
waited on him mth the bill of fare for the banquet, and the first 
article which attracted his attention was " fifty hams." " Half a 
hundred hams !" said the Prince, " that's a coarse idea, Bertrand. 
You have not got to feed my regiment of cavalry." "Truly^ 



100 TABLE TEAITS. 

Prince ! and only one ham Avill appear on the table ; I want the 
remaining forty-nine for adjuncts, seasonings, flavourings, and a 
dozen other purposes." " Bertrand," replied the Prince, " you are 
robbing me, and I cannot allow this article to pass." " Monseig- 
neur !" exclaimed the offended artiste, " you doubt my morals, and 
libel my merit. You do not know what a treasure you possess in 
me ; you have only to order it, and those fifty hams which so 
terribly offend you, why, I will put them all into a phial not 
bigger than my thumb !" The Prince smiled, and Bertrand 
triumphed. 

The cooks of the young King Louis XVI. remarked, with 
mingled terror and disgust, that his appetite was rather voracious 
than delicate. He cared little what he ate, provided there was 
enough of it; and he looked to nutrition rather than niceness. 
A succulent joint with him had more merit than the most singu- 
lar of dishes, the invention of which had perhaps caused three 
nights of wakefulness to its author. But the aristocracy, the law, 
and finance, maintained tables which ought to have been the pride 
of Versailles. Late dinners, or gorgeous suppers, were indulged in 
to such a degree by the moneyed classes, that it was familiarly 
said, that of an evening the chimneys of the Faubourg Saint 
Honore made fragrant with their incense the entire capital. It 
was reckoned that, at this period, twenty thousand men had no 
other profession than that of " diner out," which they carried on, 
like the parasites of old, by retailing anecdotes and news in return 
for the repast. It was a time when " Monseigneur " thought 
nothing of dispatching his cook to London to procure a turtle ; 
which, after all, was less extravagant than the process of Camba- 
ceres, who had his Perigord pies sent to him tl^rough the post, 
" On his Majesty's Service." The Languedocien cooks in France 
were paid the quadruple of the salary of the family tutor, good 
eating- being so much more essential to life than mere instruction ; 
and, besides, could the family tutor have accomplished any thing 
that could equal the achievement of the family cook who could 
bring to table enth-e a '^ sanglier a la cra'paudineV The cooks of 
the age of Louis XVI. invented the " houillie " and the " con- 



THE MODEEN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 101 

somme^'' because mastication was considered by tbem a vulgar 
process ; and the royal cooks, during Passion Week, manipulated 
the vegetables placed before the King into the forms of ocean- 
dwelling fish, and gave to the semblance the taste of the reality 
for which it passed to the eye. 

The glory of gastronomy was again rising when it was suddenly 
quenched by the revolutionary torrent, and the nation was put on 
a three years' meagre dietary by the Jacobins and the Directory. 
But the Revolution which affected to hate cooks as aristocratic 
appendages that ought to be suppressed, sometimes made, where 
it hoped to mar. The case of Ude is one in point. 

Monsieur Ude, like Prince Eugene, was originally intended for 
the Church. At the breaking out of the French Revolution, he 
was residing, for instruction, with an Abbe, and master and pupil 
had to fly before the popular indignation, which, for a time, 
assailed the Church, and all therewith connected. Ude's life was 
in peril in the public streets, and he just saved it, by rushing into 
the shop of a pastry-cook, where he found a permanent asylum. 
The " house of Ude," like other great houses, nearly perished in 
the great political shipwreck of the day, and this particular scion 
thereof took to the study of practical gastronomy, and became 
chief supreme in various great kitchens, from that of royalty down 
to that of Crockford. 

When the sluices of the French Revolution were opened, how 
diverse were the fortunes of those who fled from before it ! It 
was the same with the gentlemen who had followed the fortunes 
of Napoleon. They were scattered like the Generals of Alexander, 
without being able, like them, to retire upon independent sovereign- 
ties, and rear dynasties of barbaric splendour. Some went to 
Greece to crush despotism, some went to Lahore to aid it. A 
few, like Latour d'Auvergne, took to the Church ; but, saving that 
portly person himself, none had the good luck to reach the archi- 
episcopate. Those who failed to procure employment in foreign 
armies, and yet could not lay aside their propensity for killing, 
went to the East, and prescribed as Physicians. Such of the rest 
as were absolutely fit for nothing, and willing to do it, inundated 



102 TABLE TEAITS. 

England, and undertook the light and irresponsible office of Pri- 
vate Tutors ! 

But it was the earlier Revolution that afforded examples of the 
greatest contrasts. Many young men, intended for the Church, 
changed their profession and became popular, useful and rich, in 
the households of European royalty, as civilizers of the kitchen, 
who raised cookery from its barbarous condition to a matter of 
science and taste. Perhaps the most curious of the waifs and 
strays of the Revolution flung upon our shores, was the Chevalier 
D'Aubigne, who contrived to live, as so many French gentlemen 
of that time did, in bitter poverty, without a sacrifice of dignity. 
He had one day been invited by an English friend to dine with 
the latter at a tavern. In the course of the repast, he took upon 
himself to mix the salad ; and the way in which he did this, 
attracted the notice of all the other guests in the room. Previous 
to the period of which I am speaking, lettuces v/ere commonly 
eaten, by tavern frequenters at least, au nahcrel, with no more 
dressing than Nebuchadnezzar had to his grass when he dieted 
daily among the beasts. Consequently, when D'Aubigne handled 
the preparation for which he had asked, like a chymist concocting 
elixir in his laboratory, the guests were lost in admiration ; for the 
refreshing aroma of a Mayonnaise was warrant to their senses, 
that the French Knight had discovered for them a new pleasure. 
One of them approached the foreign magician, and said, " Sir, it 
is universally known that your nation excels all others in the 
making a salad. Would it be too great a liberty to ask you to 
do us the favour to mix one for the party at my table?" The 
courteous Frenchman smiled, was flattered, performed the office 
asked of him, and put four gentlemen in a state of uncontrollable 
ecstasy. He had talked cheerfully, as he mixed gracefully and 
scientifically, and, in the few minutes required by him to complete 
his work of enchantment, he contrived to explain his position as 
emigrant, and his dependence on the pecuniary aid afforded by 
the English Government. The guests did not let the poor Cheva- 
lier depart without slipping into his hand a golden fee, which he 
received with as little embarrassment, and as much dignity, as 



THE MODEHK COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE. 103 

ttougli lie had been the Physician De Portal taking an honorarium 
from the hands of the Cardinal de Rohan. 

He had communicated his address, and he, perhaps, was not 
very much surprised when, a few days after, he received a letter 
in which he was politely requested to repair to a house in Gros- 
venor Square, for the purpose of mixing a salad for a dinner-party 
there to be given. D'Aubigne obeyed the summons ; and, after 
performing his mission, returned home richer by a five-pound note 
than when he went out. 

Henceforth he became the recognised "fashionable salad-maker;" 
and ladies " died " for his salads, as they do now for Constantine's 
simulative bouquets. The preparer was soon enabled to proceed 
to his responsible duties in a carriage ; and a servant attended him, 
carrying a mahogany case, containing the necessary ingredients 
for concocting various salads, according to the respective tastes of 
his employers. At a later period, he sold, by hundreds, similar 
mahogany cases, which he had caused to be made, and which 
were furnished with all matters necessary for the making an irre- 
proachable salad, and with directions how to administer them. 
The Chevalier, too, was, like old Carre, — whose will was so 
cleverly made by the very disinterested friends who had never 
before spoken to him, — a prudent and a saving man ; and by the 
period which re-opened France to the emigres^ he had realized 
some eighty thousand francs, upon which he enjoyed a dignified 
retirement in a provincial town. He invested sixty thousand 
francs in the Funds ; with the other twenty thousand he purchased 
a little estate in the Limousin, and, if he lacked a " legend " to his 
de\T.ce, I w^ould have helped him to one in " Sal adferV 

A Knight over a salad-bowl is not a chivalrous picture ; but the 
stern necessity of the case gave it dignity and the resulting profits 
quieted the scruples of the gentleman. When Booth pounced 
upon Captain Bath, sitting in a dirty flannel gown, and warming 
his sister's posset at the fire, the noble and gaunt Captain was 
taken something aback, and said, in a little confusion, " I did not 
expect, Sir, to be seen by you in this situation." Booth told him 
" he thought it impossible he could appear in a situation more 



104: TABLE TRAITS. 

becoming his character," The compliment was equivocal; but 
the Captain said, "You do not? By G — I am very much obliged 
to you for that opinion ; but I believe, Sir, however my weakness 
may prevail on me to descend from it, no man can be more con- 
scious of his own dignity than myself." The apology of good 
Captain Bath in. Fielding's "Amelia," would have served the Che- 
valier who made salads, had he needed one. 

If a salad made the fortune of a Chevalier, it on one occavon 
made that of a female cook, with whose dexteritjT'in this respect a 
learned English Judge was so enchanted, that he raised the lucky 
maiden to the quality of wife. If we discuss the traits of life at 
table, we have nothing to do with the secrets of household ; but 
an incident, illustrative of the consequences of this match, may be 
mentioned. The Judge ever after was famous for protracting the 
sittings of court beyond all precedent and patience; and when 
weary Barristers were aghast at hearing a new cause called on, 
when the night was half spent, and fairly remonstrated against the 
judicial cruelty, the learned husband of his cook would remark 
with a sigh, " Gentlemen, v/e must be somewhere ; we cannot be , 
better any where than where we now are," — the half of which 
Assertion was stoutly denied by his hearers. 

Our aristocracy are not quite so famous for their invention of 
dishes as that of France ; but their love for good dinners, and their 
knowledge of what they ought to be, are not inferior to the affec- 
tion and science of our neighbours. "When Lord Marcus Hill 
officiated as whipper-in to the Whig Government, it was part of 
his office to order the fish dinner at which Ministers regale them- 
selves when sectional cares no longer molest them. The fish din- 
ners of Lord Marcus are remembered with satisfaction and grati- 
tude ;» for they were first-rate in their way. The reputation of the 
Carlton cuisine and cellar is said to be chiefly owing to Sir Alex- 
ander Grant, of whom a gastronomic critic says, "Ko living 
Amphitryon has given better dinners in his time ; and few can 
boast of having entertained more distinguished guests." His name, 
as a patron, reminds me of that of Careme, as a practitioner. 



PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAEEME. 105 



PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CARfiME. 

It would be as easy to corapile a Dictionary of Cooks, as of 
Musicians or Painters ; but it would not be so amusing or so edifying, 
except perhaps to those who think more of their stomach than 
of their mind. But it would then be attractive and useful to the 
majority of readers ; for the sages themselves are not unmindful 
of their stomachs, and, according to a sage, they would be unworthy 
of the name if they neglected that vital matter. Johnson, you 
know, lived in an age when things were called by their real names. 
' J''appelle un chat un chat^'' was the device of the plain-spoken, 
when not only men, but ladies, bold as the Thalestris of Young's 
pungent satire, loudly dared to name what nature dared to give. 
Dr. Johnson, then, says, "Some people have a foolish way of not 
minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, 
I mind my belly very studiously ; for I look upon it that he who 
does not mind his helly^ will hardly mind any thing else !" 

To the world, then, even a Biographical Dictionary of Cooks 
might be captivating ; but as my present mission is not to write 
an Encyclopedia, but rather deferentially to offer my little sketches 
to gentle, and not too critical, readers, with leisure half-hours at 
their command, so do I offer them a sketch of Careme, as the 
knowledge of the individual may stand for that of the class. 

He was illustrious by descent ; for one of his ancestors had served 
in the household of a Pope, who himself made more sauces than 
saints, Leo X. But Careme was one of so poor and so numerous 
a family, that when he came into the world, he was no more wel- 
come than Oliver Goldsmith was : the respective parents of the 
little-cared-for babes did not know what future great men lay in 
naked helplessness before them. One wrote immortal poetry, and 
starved : the other made delicious pastry, and rode in a chariot ! 
We know how much Oliver received for his "Yicar;" while 
Anthony Careme used to receive twice as much for merely writing 



106 TABLE TRAITS. 

out a recipe to make a "^d^e." Nay, Careme's untouched patties, 
when they left royal tables, were brought up at a cost which would 
ha^e supported Goldsmith for a month ; and a cold sugared entre- 
mets at the making of which Careme had presided, readily fetched 
a higher price than the public now pay for the "Complete Works" 
of the poet of Green- Arbour-court ! 

Careme studied under various great masters, but he perfected 
his studies under Boucher, chef des services of the Prince Talley- 
rand. The glory of Careme was co-eval with that of Napoleon : 
those two individuals were great men at the sam^ period ; but the 
glory of one will, perhaps, be a little more enduring than that of 
the other. I will not say ivliose glory will thus last the longer ; for 
as was remarked courteously by the Oxford candidate for honours, 
who was more courteous than " crammed," and who was asked 
which were the minor Prophets, " I am not willing to draw invid- 
ious distinctions !" 

In the days of the Empire, — the era of the greatness, of the 
achievements, and of the reflections of Careme, — the possession 
of him was as eagerly contested by the rich as that of a nymph 
by the satyrs. He was alternately the glory of Talleyrand, the 
boast of Lavalette, and the pride of the Saxon Ambassador. In 
their houses, too, his hand was as often on his pen as on the handle 
of his casserole ; and inspiration never visited his brain without 
the call being duly registered in his note-book, with reflections 
thereon highly philosophical and gastronomic. 

But Careme was capricious. It was not that he was unfaithful, 
but he was volage ; and he passed from kitchen to kitchen, as the 
bee wings from flower to flower. The Emperor Alexander dined 
with Talleyrand, and forthwith he seduced Careme : the seduction 
money was only dSlOO sterling per month, and the culinary expenses. 
Careme did not yield without much coyness. He urged his love 
for study, his desire to refine the race of which he made himself 
the model, his love for his country ; and he even accompanied, for 
a brief moment, " Lord Stewart " to Vienna ; but it was more in 
the way of policy than pastry : for Count Orlofl" was sent after 



PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME. 107 

Mm on a mission, and Careme, after flying, with the full intention 
of being followed, to London and Paris, yielded to the golden 
solicitation, and did the Emperor Alexander the honour of becom- 
ing the head of the imperial kitchen in whatever palace His 
Majesty presided. But the delicate susceptibility of Careme was 
wounded by discovering that his book of expenses was subjected 
to supervision. He flung up his appointment in disgust, and hast- 
ened across Europe to England. The jealous winds wished to 
detain him for France, and they blew him back on the coast between 
Calais and Boulogne, exactly as they did another gentleman, who 
may not be so vndely known as Careme, but who has been heard 
of in England under the name of William Wordsworth. Careme 
accepted the omen, repaired to Paris, entered the service of the 
Princess Bagration, and served the table of that capricious lady, 
en maitre d^hotel. As the guests uttered ecstatic praises of the 
fare, the Princess would smile upon him as he stood before her, 
and exclaim, " He is the pearl of cooks !" Is it a matter of sur- 
prise that he was vain? Fancy being called a^" pearl" by a 
Princess ! On reading it we think of the days when Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague put nasty footmen into eclogues, and deified the 
dirty passions of Mrs. Mahony's lacquey. 

The Princess, however, ate herself into a permanent indigestion, 
and Careme transferred his services to the English Ambassador 
at the Court of Vienna. There, every morning, seated in his 
magnificent kitchen, Careme received the visit of "Milor Stewart," 
who seldom left him without presents and encouragements. 
Indeed, these rained upon the immortal artist. The Emperor Alex- 
ander had consented to have Careme's projects in culinary archi- 
tecture dedicated to him, and, with notice of consent, sent him a 
diamond ring. When Prince Walkouski placed it on his finger, 
the cook forgot his dignity, and burst into tears. So did all the 
other cooks in the Austrian capital, — out of sheer jealousy. 

Careme, two years before George IV. was King, had been for a 
short period a member of the Regent's household. He left Vienna 
to be present at the Coronation ; but he arrived too lat^ \ and h^ 



108 TABLE TEAITS. 

does not scruple to say, very ungenerously, that tlie banquet was 
spoiled for want of his presence, nor to insinuate that the col- 
leagues with whom he would have been associated were unworthy 
of such association, — an insinuation at once base and baseless. 
After being the object of a species of semi-worship, and yielding 
to every new otler, yet affecting to despise them all, Careme ulti- 
mately tabernacled with Baron Rothschild in Paris ; and the 
super-human excellency of his dinners, is it not written in the 
"Book without a name" of Lady Morgan? And was not his 
residence there the object of envy, and cause of much melancholy, 
and opportunity for much eulogy, on the part of George IV J 
"Well, Anthony Careme would have us believe as much with 
respect to himself and the King ; but we do not believe a word 
of it ; for the royal table was never better cared for by the royal 
officers, whose duty lay in such care, than at this very period. 
George IV. is said to have tempted him by offering triple salaries ; 
but all in vain ; for London was too triste an abiding place for a 
man whose whole soul, out of kitchen hours, was given to study. 
And so Carem^l remained with his Jewish patron until infirmity 
overtook his noble nature, and he retired to dictate his immortal 
works (like Milton, very!) to his accomplished daughter. Les 
beaux restes of Careme were eagerly sought after ; but he would 
not heed what was no longer a temptation ; for he was realizing 
twenty thousand francs a year from the bookseller, besides the 
interest of the money he had saved. Think of it, shade of Mil- 
ton! Eight hundred pounds sterling yearly^ for writing on 
kitchen-stuff I Who would compose epics after that ? But Ca- 
reme's books were epics after their sort, and they are highly cre- 
ditable to the scribe who wrote them from his notes. Finally, 
even Antony Careme died, like cooks of less degree ; but he had 
been the imperial despot of European kitchens, had been "be- 
ringed " by Monarchs, and been smiled on by Princesses ; he had 
received Lords in his kitchen, and had encountered ladies who 
gave him a great deal for a very little knowledge in return ; and 
finally, as Fulke Greville had inscribed on his tomb that he had 



PEN AOT) mK SKETCH OF CAEEME. 109 

been the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, so the crowning joy of 
Care me's life might have been chiselled on his monument, indi- 
cating that he had been the friend of one whom he would have 
accounted a greater man than the knightly hero in question, — 
namely, il Maestro Rossini ! Careme's cup was thereat full ; and 
he died, perfectly convinced that paradise itself would be glad at 
his coming. 

The celebrated Damvers was chef to the as celebrated financier 
Grimoud de la Reyniere, in the last century. Grimaud died a 
martyr to his epicurean tastes. He was dining on a imte de foies 
gras^ when he allowed his appetite to overpower his digestion, 
and he died of the excess. Barthe, the author of "Zes Fausses 
Jnfid elites ^^'' also fell on the field of the dining-room. He was 
extremely short-sighted, and ate of every thing on the table. He 
did not consult his appetite, but his servant, asking him, " Have 
I eaten of that ?" " Have I had any of this ?" It was after 
partaking too freely, both of " this '' and " that," that poor M. 
Barthe let his temper get the better of him in an argument, and 
a stroke of apoplexy sent him under the table. His cook deplored 
in him the loss of a man of taste. 

The cook of the Count de Tesse, Master of the Horse to Marie 
Antoinette, was famous for dressing artichokes. The great Mo- 
rillian surpassed him, however; but this feat did not save the 
artist from ending his days in poverty. The elder Robert was, 
perhaps, equal to either of them in this or in any other respect 
connected with his art. The great Careme, ignorant of every thing- 
else, was at least an accomplished cook. There is, as I have said, 
a tradition that his petits 2^oLtes, when they left the Regent's table, 
were sold, like the second-hand pies from the royal table at Ver- 
sailles, for fabulous prices. As I have before intimated, it was for 
Leo X. that Careme the First invented those succulent, but ortho- 
dox, dishes, which pleased the pontifical palate at a season when 
gratification by gra^^^ would have been scandalous ! It was in the 
Baron Rothschild's household that Careme the Second invented 
his famous sauce inquante^ the result of his studies under Richaut, 



110 TABLE TRAITS. 

Asne, and the elder Robert. It was in and for France that Ca- 
reme published the learned and curious work of which he is the 
reputed author, and which he may have dictated, but which he 
could not have written. It is marked by philosophical inquiry, 
instruction and pleasant trifling; and neither book nor reputed 
author has been excelled by any artist, or any example of kitchen 
literature, that has appeared since that period. 

Before the age of Careme, the popular kitchen in France was 
not very superior to our own ; and the patrons of tavernes and 
traiteurs were as coarsely fed as our frequenters of ordinaries. 
But as royalty fell, the restaurateurs rose ; and when, in 1Y86, the 
cooks of Louis XVI. began to augur badly of their prospects, 
three provincial brothers, Barthelemy, Mannielles and Simon, 
opened their famous restaurant, " Les Trois Freres Provengaux^'' 
in the Palais Royal, and constituted themselves the cooks of another 
King, — the sovereign people. The new establishment created an 
era in the history of cookery, and men of all shades of politics 
and Generals of all grades of reputation, resorted to the tables of 
the Brothers. General Bonaparte and Barras were to be seen 
there daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at the theatre 
of Mdlle. Montansier. During the wars of the Empire it was the 
chosen stage for the farewell banquets of brethren in arms, and 
at this period the receipts amounted to not less than £500 sterling 
daily. The triumvirate of proprietors endured longer than any 
such union in the political world ; and it was not till the reign of 
Louis Philippe that the establishment of "Zes Trois Freres^'' 
descended, under a new proprietary, into a more unpretending 
position than that which it had proudly sustained during half a 
century. The casseroles of the savoury brothers had remained 
unshaken, while Kings and constitutions had fallen around them. 

The fortune of the Provincial Brothers tempted another country 
cook from his obscurity ; and some four years after the former had 
set up their tables in the Palais Royal, the immortal Very thrust 
his feet into wooden clogs, and trudged from a village on the Meuse 
tip to the capital, to give it a taste of his quality. He enchanted 



PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAHEME. Ill 

Marshal Duroc with some of his plats, and henceforth his fortune was 
secure. He married a beautiful woman, whose pen kept his books? 
whose face attracted customers, and whose heart was devoted to 
her husband. A quarter of a century sufficed to enable Very to 
die immensely rich, after working excessively hard, and to be 
magnificently entombed in the Cimetiere Montmartre, under a 
marble column, which bore the engraved assurance that "his 
whole life was devoted to the useful arts." 

Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time as " the 
Three Brothers ;" he made and unmade his fortune three or four 
times, and died poor, three years after Very died so rich. Beau- 
villiers was the author of " L^ Art du Cuisinier^^'' a book almost 
as interesting as "The Art of Dining;" and one cannot name 
either without standing mentally chateau has ! before the author. 

Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and heavy bill. 
The Veau qui tette was renowned for its sheep-trotters. The re- 
putation of others was built upon kidneys ; that of Very, on his 
entrees truffees. The " Three Provincial Brothers " enjoyed a wide 
esteem for the way in which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine 
kept a house that was crowded by the admirers of fish ; while that 
of Robert was distinguished for the graceful attention with which 
previously ordered dinners were served ; and that of Henneveu for 
the splendid boudoirs in which shy couples, too modest to encoun- 
ter the public gaze could dine in private, and cease to find their 
modesty oppressive. Beauvilliers', as I have intimated, was a costly 
house ; but it was not therefore the most excellent in Paris. The 
excellence of a dinner is not to be determined by its price. Four 
years ago an illustrious party dined at Philippe's, in the Rue Mon- 
torgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a far more exquisite fashion^ 
than if they had joined the Epicureans of the Clarendon, at £5 
per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham and Dufierin 
the Honourable W. Stuart, two other "Britishers," and Count 
D'Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The dinner on this occasion 
was a recherchee aff"air. It had been as anxiously meditated upon 
as an epic poem ; and it was a far pleasanter thing. "The most 



112 TABLE TEAITS. 

successful clislies," says the author of " The Art of Dining," " were 
the bisques the fritures a V Italienne^ and the gigot a la Bretanne. 
Out of compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord Brougham 
and Alexandre Dumas, M. PhilijDpe produced some Clos de Vougeot, 
which, (like his namesake in ' High Life Below Stairs,) he vowed, 
should never go down the throat of a man whom he did not esteem 
and admire ; and it was voted first-rate by acclamation." 

The French repasts are not always good, even when they are 
rather costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two sat down to a 
repast at the younger " Robert's," in Paris. The Amphitryon of 
the feast was M. Daolouis ; and the bill, exclusive of wine, amount- 
ed to thirty louis. There were but three or four great dishes, and 
two or three sauces. The discontent of the guests was general, 
and the giver of the feast allowed that the dinner was not near 
so good as that of the " Societe des Mercredis,''^ at Ze Gacque's, 
which cost only seven francs per head, ordinary wine, liqueurs, and 
cojffee included. " Mais, a diner ^ Messieurs, a diner /" 



DINNEK TEAITS. 113 



DINNER TRAITS. 

" For these and all His mercies " once began Dr. Johnson, 

whose good custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good 
things set before him ; but he almost as invariably found fault 
with the food given. And of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson 
grew tired ; and on the occasion alluded to, she stopped her hus- 
band by remarking that it was a farce to pretend to be grateful 
for dishes which, in two minutes, he would pronoi^fce to be as 
worthless as the worst of Jeremiah's figs ! And so there was no 
blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the one employed 
by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked inquir- 
ingly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. " Well," remarked the good 
ancient dame, " I think I must say as one did in the like case, 
' God be thanked ! — nobody will say grace !' " It is seldom that 
" grace " is properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious 
mockery at public dinners ; but then every man should silently 
and fervently make thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an 
ungracious knave who sits down to a meal without at least a silent 
acknowledgment of gratitude to Him, without whom there could 
have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a defaulter deserves 
to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn better manners. 
" Come, gentlemen," Beau Nash used to say, " eat, and welcome !" 
It was all his grace; and had he said, "Come, gentlemen, be 
thankful and eat," it would have been more like the Christian 
gentleman, and less like the " beau." 

It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at 
the dinner table, that the company should not be more than the 
Muses nor less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited 
freedoni of action in the matter ; for, by the Lex Faunia^ a man 
was forbidden to invite more than three strangers (not of his 
family) to dinner, except on market days, (three times a month,) 
when he might invite five. The host was restricted to spending only 



114 TABLE TRAITS. 

two and a half drachmas ; but lie might consume annually one 
hundred and twenty Roman pounds of beef for each person in his 
house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that grew 
wild ; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at 
all." One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a 
great deal of it, and ruined men's stomachs in consequence. 
When the French Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark 
district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a w^ord about 
candles, and the wits walked about with the lanterns unfurnished. 
The official^ectified the mistake by ordering the candles ; but as 
he omittec^) say that these were to be lighted, the public did not 
profit by the decree. So the Lex Faunia, when it allowed unres- 
trained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit sauces ; and vegetables 
generally were eaten with such luscious aids to which the name 
of " sauce " was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to the 
temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint ! After 
all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who rigorously 
observed the Faunia Law, according to their oaths. These v>^ere 
men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, 
when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling 
that he could devote to gluttony ; or than LucuUus, who never 
supped in the "Apollo" without its costing him at least ten 
thousand pounds. 

Notwithstanding this, the Faunia Law was an absurd imperti- 
nence. It was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing 
the poet Antagoras in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his 
dinner, asked, " Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang 
the deeds of heroes while he boiled fish ?" " And you, O King," 
returned the poet, "thinkest thou that Agamemnon gained 
renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had boiled fish 
for dinner in his camp ?" The moral is, that it is best,to leave 
men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to 
make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could 
commit the crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb 
dish of fish for himself, evenrvGev elg avr7]v^ " spat in it ;" and if 



Dltra-EE TRAITS. 115 

my readers refer to the chapter illustrating " Their Majesties at 
Meat," they will find that so dirty a trick was not the reserved 
privilege of Heathenism. 

The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread 
and honey. On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed 
dine, but died. He had determined to commit suicide, and had 
cut down his allowance to such small rations, that his death was 
expected daily. But the fun and the festival of Ceres was at hand ; 
and the ladies of his house begged him to be good enough not 
to spoil the frolic by dying at such a mirthful moment. He 
consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive by 
smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his family hoped 
that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He took one 
sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed away for 
ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those 
ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think 
worse of Madame du Deffand, who went out to dine on the day 
her old lover died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky 
it was that he had expired before six o'clock, as otherwise she would 
have been too late for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant 
society who played cards by the side of the bed of the dying 
Mile, de I'Espinasse, and counted their tricks while they com- 
mented upon her " rattles," may be pronounced as being twice as 
Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus. 

A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the 
digestive powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a 
far less commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their 
chill, which even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather 
than% arousing the stomach. The French houilli after soup is a 
dangerous vulgarity ; for it is simply, as a distinguished professor 
has styled it, " meat, all but its nourishing juice." 

"Poultry," says M. Brillat, "is to the sick man who has been 
floating over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or 
sight of land to the storm-beaten mariner." But a skilful cook 
ran render almost any dish attractive to any and every quality of 
appetite. In this respect, the French and Chinese cooks are 



116 TABLE TKAITS. 

really professional brethren ; mucli more so than a general practi- 
tioner and a veterinary surgeon ! 

The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and 
judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and 
the meal of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutri- 
tious dish. They eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. 
Why not? All these are far cleaner feeders than pigs and 
lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is so nice in his appetite, that he 
will refuse the corn which has been breathed upon by another 
horse. The Tonquin birds' nests eaten in China may be described 
as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris grisettes : " Eather eata- 
ble things, those grisettes, by the bye !" So are the birds' nests, 
composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, 
supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears' 
paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subse- 
quently soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, 
form a dish that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius 
himself. 

There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke 
of Wellington's cook had serious doubts as to his master being a 
great man, — he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another 
General wbo was the despair of cooks. His biographer says of 
him, that he was at dinner when Col. Hamilton appeared before 
him to announce an Austrian victory over the French. The 
General had one huge plate before him, a sort of Irish stew, with 
every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting out the 
bones, " as was his custom." He was so delighted with the mes- 
sage and the messenger that he received him as Galba did Icelus, 
tlie announcer of Nero's death : with his unwiped mouth, he 
began kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke bf Newcastle 
once did the bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on 
his sitting down and eating from the General's plate, " without 
ceremony." The great Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid 
eater ; but he was more nice in his diet. The characteristic of 
Coligny was, that he always used to eat his tooth-picks ! 

According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within 



DINNER TKATTS. 117 

four-and-tv/enty hours was deemed accepted ; and from an invita- 
tion given and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties 
but illness, imprisonment, or death ! Nothing suffers so much by 
delay as dinner ; and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it 
should also be the policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of 
punctuality on the part of the former has been illustrated in the 
cases of men, of whom it is said that they never saw soup and 
fish but at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley Ward used 
to cite two brothers as startling examples of want of punctuality : 
" If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you got Charles 
on Thursday, at eight 1" On the other hand, an unpunctual cook 
is scarcely to be accounted a cook ; and an unpunctual master is 
not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the 
moment it has been ordered. The great " artiste " who dismissed 
his patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had 
kept it waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the 
dignity of his profession. 

At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in 
France to serve the soup immediately befere the company entered 
the dining-room. The resulting advantage was a simultaneous 
operation on the part of the guests. The innovation was intro- 
duced by Mile. Emilie Contat, the actress ; but it was tolerated 
only for a season. It Avas, at the same period, of rigorous 
necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush the empty 
shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a breach 
in good manners ; but the reason of this prandial law I have 
never been able to discover. Mile. Contat was almost as famous 
for her love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, 
equally often, " on hospitable thoughts intent." 

It would appear that in Foote's time Scotland was not famous 
for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious din- 
ners to the first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings 
thereto were intended to be highly satirical upon what he consi- 
dered Scottish parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he 
used to paper the curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes, — ' 



118 TABLE TKAITS. 

promissory paper, as lie said, of no value. When his cook, 
waited on him at breakfast-time for orders, " Sam " gravely 
uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the attendant, as purchase- 
money for the necessary provisions, and sent her to market in a 
sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and ostentatious 
at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the 
Vv'ines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with 
a shade of disgust, inquired, " If any body drank port ?" As no 
one dared to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the 
owner took it "medicinally,") he would direct the servant to 
" take away the ink !" 

If Foote dislike port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a con- 
tempt for claret, " which," said he, " would be like port, if it could !" 
The latter individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used 
to raise his glass of claret aloft, with a cry, " If this be war, may 
we never have peace 1" 

Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, 
none of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed 
in large quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. 
That Sovereign is said to have asked Eichelieu if Bourdeaux wines 
were " drinkable." " From father to son the Bourbon race," says 
Bungener, in his incomparable work, " Trois Sermons sous Louis 
X/F.," ate and drank with relish ; and it was no jest that among 
the three talents attributed by the old song to Henri IV., (their 
ancestor,) was numbered that of a " good drinker." " None of 
them, however, with the exception of the Regent, carried it to 
excess ; but what was not excess for them, would have been so for 
many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory, and Louis 
XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the laws of 
their imperious appetite." 

When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were 
drinkable, the Duke answered him in terms which I may cite, because 
of their correctness. " Sire," he replied, " they have, what they 
call, ' white Sauterne,' which, though far from being so good as 
that of Monrachet, or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is stiU 



DINJ^EK TBAITS. 119 

not to be despised. There is also a certain wine from Grave, whicli 
smacks of the flint, like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, 
but keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two 
or three sorts of red wine, of which they boast a great deal. It is 
nectar fit for the gods, if one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly 
not comparable to the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not 
bad, however, and it has an indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, 
which is not disagreeable. Besides, one can drink as much as one 
will. It puts people to sleep, and that is all !" " It puts people to 
sleep," said the King : " send for a pipe of it !" This is as just 
a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux, as was that given by 
Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne : " It does not enter," he said, 
" and steal your reason ; it simply makes a run-away knock at a 
man's head, and there's an end of it 1" 

But we are indulging in too much at dinner. Let us return to 
the solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our 
path, perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that 
they have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men 
must, or should ; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before 
the anguish of appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his Gaietes 
Champetres^^^ " Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, 
overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Montauban, after 
running, all day long, after Mademoiselle Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes 
and knocks at the door of the neighbouring chateau^ and asks to be 
invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the 'Iliad,' as afflicted as 
woman can be, does not forget, when night comes, to take a little 
refreshment." If Seneca derided such doings, it was only after 
dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made up of 
sentiment and hunger ; and Hood's sentimentalist was not unnatural 
with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said, — 

" 'Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase, — 
Yes, for Morris he ask'd me to dine ; 
And I thought I had never beheld such a face, 
Or so noble a turkey and chine." 



120 TABLE TRAITS. 

This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all 
the acts of most importance in our lives ; and though Bacchus, 
Cupid, Comus, and Diana be no longer the deities or the heati of 
the earth, the substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat 
Savarin asserts, under the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate 
bj repasts not only births, baptisms, and marriages, but even inter- 
ments. 

The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time 
when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to llesh ; for then the 
family necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and 
cooked. They know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfac- 
tion of the animal appetite ; but the true, refined pleasures of the 
table date only from the time when Prometheus fired the soul with 
heavenly flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant 
followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens 
the heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke as he is at a favour. 

Nelson never knew the sensation of " fear," but when he was 
asked to dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners 
generally : and he was right ; for true intellectual enjoyment is 
seldom there. Horace, with his modest repasts and fair wine, was 
something of the same opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is 
indifierent, the guests too numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, 
the time short, and the repast too eagerly consumed, there is no 
dinner, in the legitimate sense of the word. I never so much 
admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, my friend M. 
Watier, as when he once prefaced one of his exquisite dinners by 
saying, with a solemn smile, " Mes mnis, ne nous pressons pas /" 
I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too willing Secretary : — 
" Surtout, pas de zUe P The most accomplished professor of his 
time has laid down, as rules for securing to their utmost degree 
the prandial pleasures of the table, that the guests do not exceed 
twelve, so that the conversation be general ; that they be of varied 
occupations, but analogous tastes ; that the lighting, cheerful clean- 
liness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully considered ; 
that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the wines 



DINNER TRAITS. 121 

of the first quality, each in its degree ; the progression of the 
former from the more substantial to the more light; of the 
latter, from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is fm-ther 
enjoined that there be no accelerated movement ; all the guests are 
to consider themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point 
at the same time. The rules for the " after dinner " in the drawing 
room are those more commonly observed in this country, with the ex- 
ception that " punch" expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the 
Peace ; but the concluding rule is worth noticing : — " That no one 
•withdraw before eleven, and that all be asleep by midnight." 

I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility have given 
to table enjoyment. To them may be added the innovation intro- 
duced by Talleyrand, of oifering Parmesan wdth soup, and present- 
ing after it a glass of dry Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in 
common with St. Peter, — he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, 
the dinner time of the Jews ; and he would have also come under 
the anathema in Ecclesiastes which is levelled against the Princes 
who eat in the morning. 

Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy "who made 
two substantial meals daily ; and Seneca was satisfied with one 
meal, — a dinner of bread and figs. The Roman Priests of Mars 
dined jollily and sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, and 
they would not be disturbed. They were Kke Baillie de Suffren, 
who, being waited on in India, by a deputation, just as he w^as sit- 
ting down to dine, sent out word that his religion would not allow 
of his interrupting his repast ; and the delegates retired, profoundly 
struck by the strictness of his conscience. The original dinner 
hour of the mediaeval ■ ages w^as, as I have elsewhere stated, ten 
o'clock, the dixieme heure ; hence the name. It was not till the 
reign of Louis XIV, that so late an hour as noon was fixed for the 
repast. It is clear, however, that we have not so much changed 
the hours as changed the names of our meals. A French historian 
shows us how a Dauphin of France dined (at ten o'clock) in the 
fifteenth century : — 

" As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his dinner rice 
6 * 



122 TABLE TEAITS. 

pottage, xnth. leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, anotlier of salt 
pork, a dish of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece 
of roast pork, cheese, and fruit." The supper was nearly as plen 
tiful ; but, on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is 
added, that the Barons of the Court had always half of the quan- 
tity of the Dauphin ; the Knights, the quarter ; and the Equerries 
and Chaplains, the eighth. "Take pride from Priests, and 
nothing remains," once remarked an Encyclopaedist to Voltaire. 
" Umph !" said Voltaire ; " do you, then, reckon gluttony for 
nothing ?" Gluttony, at least, does not seem to have character- 
ized the Dauphin's Chaplains, in the fifteenth century, seeing that 
they took an eighth where a Baron had half. 

But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined after a 
more singular fashion than that of the Dauphins, his ancestors. I 
allude to the Prince mentioned by Maurepas, and whose imagina- 
tion was so sick, that he fancied himself a hare, and would not 
allow a bell to be rung, lest it should terrify him into the woods, 
where he might be shot by his own game-keepers, and afterwards 
served up at his own table. At another time, he had a fancy that 
he would look well dished up; and, dreaming himself a cauli- 
flower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his kitchen-garden, and 
called upon his people to come and water him ! At last, he pro- 
nounced himself dead, and refused to dine at all, as an insult to 
his spiritual entity. He would have died, had he not been 
visited by two friends, who introduced themselves as his late 
father, and the deceasred Marechal de Luxembourg ; and who 
solemnly invited him to descend with them to the shades, and 
dine with the ghost of Marechal Turenne. The melancholy 
Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down with them to a cel- 
lar already prepared for the banquet of the departed ; and he not 
only made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made of him- 
self a ghost, he insisted every day on dining with congenial sha- 
dows in the coal-cellar ! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he 
was excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially where 
his own interests were concerned. 



DINNES TRAITS. 123 

Thus much — briefly and imperfectly, I fear — for Dinner Traits. 
In the next chapter we will put something on them. And as v/e 
have been drawing examples from folly, let us end this section by 
adding a maxim full of wisdom. " Be not made a beggar," says 
£Jcclesiasticus, "by banqueting upon borrowing, when thou hast 
nothing in thy purse." If this maxim were generally adopted, 
there might be fewer dinners given, but there would be more din- 
ners paid for. But some people are like the ancient Belgians, 
who borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repayment in 
the world to come ! Many a dinner-giver belongs to the class of 
the borrowing Belgians of antiquity. After all, there was, per- 
haps, more intended honesty in the compact than we can distin- 
guish. A compact far less honest was made some years ago by 
an Irish Baronet, who had given so many dinners for which he 
had not paid, that he was compelled to pledge his plate in order 
to raise means to satisfy the most pressing of his creditors. Some 
time subsequently, he induced the pawnbroker to lend him the 
plate for one evening, on hire ; the pawnbroker's men were to 
wait at the dinner in livery, and convey the silver back as soon as 
the repast was concluded. The dinner was given and enjoyed, 
and the company made the attendants drunk, helped the Baronet 
to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and epergnes, with which he 
set off for Paris, where some of them afterwards visited him at the 
little dinners he used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed 
over the matter as a very capital jest. 

I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting at table 
to drink, after dinner was over, was introduced by Margaret 
Atheling, the Saxon Queen of Scotland. She was shocked to see , 
the Scottish gentlemen rise from table before grace could be said 
by her Chaplain, Turgot ; and she offered a cup of choice wine to 
all who would remain. Thence the fashion of hard drinking fol- 
lowing the " thanksgiving." 



124 TABLE TBAITS. 



THE MATERIALS FOR DINING. 

" All flesh is grass ;" and grass has been the foundation of 
all feasts, in a double sense. It was not only a part of the early 
repast, in some shape or another, by derivation rather than imme- 
diately, but it formed the most ancient seats occupied by primi- 
tive and pastoral guests in very remote times. Dr. Johnson 
approved of asparagus being called " grass." Romulus thought 
grass a sacred emblem, or he would not have suddenly converted 
his twelve lay foster-brothers into a priesthood to look after it. 
"When Baber had defeated the Afghans of Kohat, they approached 
him in despair, and, according to their custom when in extremi- 
ties, with grass between their teeth, to signify, as the imperial 
autobiographer says, " We are your oxen." Baber treated them 
worse than oxen ; for the amiable savage says, " All that were taken 
alive were beheaded by my order, and at the next halting-place we 
erected a minaret of their skulls. And the conqueror dined 
pleasantly in front of the monument. 

My friend. Captain Lionel da Costa, tells me, that on accom- 
panying {en amateur) a French force on a razzia against an Arab 
tribe in Algeria, he witnessed the employment of grass as an 
emblem of defiance rather than of submission. The French offi- 
cers had assembled the Arab Ohiefs, and, telling them that the 
foreigners had filled up their wells, carried off their cattle, and 
burned their dwellings, exhorted them to submission, asking the]n 
what they would do 'further against a country so powerful as 
France? The Arabs, as if impelled simultaneously, stooped to 
the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass there growing, and 
began chewing the same in angry silence: this was all their 
reply, and by it they intimated that they would eat what the 
earth gave, like the beasts that are upon it, rather than surrender. 
Their enemies could not refrain from admiring and feeding such 
adversaries; their mute eloquence was worth more than any 



THE MATERIALS FOS DINING-. 125 

thing uttered to tyrants by Power's statue of tlie Greek Slave, 
whicli, according to Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, "thunders white 
silence," — a silence that must have been akin to that in the French 
Tragedy, ^^ silence qui se jit entendre P'' 

Soup, as I have remarked, is not a bad preparation for the 
stomach. Some one calls it tbe "preface of a dinner," adding, 
however, that a good work needs no preface. Soup is of very 
ancient date. Rebecca and Jacob ate of a potage, in which the 
meat was cut into small bits before the muscular fibres had cooled 
and become hardened, and stewed in milk, thickened with meal 
and herbs. The famous French gastronomist, the Marquis de 
Cussy, was orthodox in his gastronomy, fed well, but heeded the 
church. His favourite soup in Lent was an onion soup, composed 
of a score of small bulbs, well cleaned, sliced, and put into a 
stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter and a little sugar. They 
were turned over the fire till they became of a fine golden colour, 
when they were moistened with broth, and the necessary quantity 
of bread added. Before the soup was served, its excellence was 
perfected by the addition of two small glasses of very old Cognac 
brandy. This Lent fare was, however, only the preface to 
salmon and asparagus, with which the orthodox epicure mortified 
his appetite. 

The famous Careme did with the soups he discovered, what the 
most famous navigators have done with the new territories on 
vfhich they were the first to land; namely, gave them the names 
of the most illustrious contemporaries then existing. Royalty 
was honoured in the " Potage Conde ;" music in that of " Boiel- 
dieu ;" and the medical faculty, which Careme generally despised, 
in the ". Soupes a la Broussais, Hoques, and Segalas ;" poetry was 
illustrated in the " Lamartine ;" history in the " Bumesnil ;" and 
philosophy in the ^^ Potage BuffonP The last name he thus 
bestowed, was to his last culinary inspiration just before death, 
when he conferred on a vegetable soup the name of "Victor 
Hugo." It was after reading the " Messeniennes,''^ that he created 
the " Matelotte a la JDelavigne ;" and he paid the doctor who had 



126 



TABLE TRAITS. 



cured him of an indigestion, by inventing the dish of fish which 
he called " Perche a la Gauhertr And with this record we will 
put the fish on our own table. 

"It is only the Arabs of the desert that afiect to despise fish.'' 
This eastern proverb is tantamount to the more homely one of, 
" The grapes are som- ;" for the Arabs only affect to despise that 
which they cannot readily obtain. The Jews were prohibited 
from eating fishes vfithout scales or fins. The Egyptian Priests 
cared not for fish of any sort, but they generally allowed the 
people to eat with what aj)petite they chose, of what the priest- 
hood declined to taste. It is said in the legend, that St. Kevin 
lived by the fish he caught in the Lake of Glendaloch ; and that 
when the celebrated beauty tempted him, she did it by flattery 
and suggestion : — 

" ' You 're a rare hand at fishing/ says Kate, 

' It 's yourself, dear, that knows how to hook them ; 

. But when you have caught them, agrah ! 

Don 't you want a young woman to cook them ? ' " 

Gatis, Queen of Spain, was something like Mr. Lover's " Kate ;" 
for, if her subjects caught fish well, she it was who first taught 
them how to cook what they caught, and how to enjoy what they 
cooked. 

"When philosophers were occupied with inquiries touching the 
soul of an oyster, fish was probably not a popular diet. It cer- 
tainly was not so in Greece, until a comparatively late period. 
Then fish became fashionable : the legislature secured their fresh- 
ness by decreeing that no seller should sit down until he had sold 
his entire stock ; sages discussed their qualities, and tragic writer,^) 
introduced heroes holding dialogues on the qualities of fish-sauce. 
There was a Greek society at that day " against cruelty to fish," 
by devouring what also, allegedly, made the devourer ferocious 
and inhuman ; but general society did not allow its appetite to be 
influenced thereby. 

The Romans were enthusiastic for the mullet. It was for them 



THE MATERIALS FOR DINING. 127 

the fish, par excellence. It was sometimes served up six pounds in 
weight, and such a fish was worth £Q>0 sterling. It was cooked 
on the table, for the benefit and pleasure of the guests. In a glass 
vessel filled with brine made from water, the blood of the 
mackerel, and salt, the live mullet, stripped of its scales, was 
enclosed; and as its fine pink colour passed through its dying- 
gradations, until paleness and death ensued, the convives looked 
on admiringly, and lauded the spectacle. 

The turbot was next in estimation ; but as, occasionally, 
offending slaves were flung into^ the turbot preserves for the fish 
to feed upon, some gastronomists have affected to be horror- 
stricken at the idea of eating a turhot a la Romaine ; quite for- 
getting that so many of our sea-fish, in their own domain, feed 
largely on the human bodies which accident, or what men call by 
that name, casts into the deep. Our own early ancestors in 
Britain were said to have entirely abstained from fish. In later 
days, however, here as in France, the finny tribes Avere protected 
by royal decrees ; and certain fish were named — the sturgeon was 
one — as to be caught for the royal table alone. In the same days 
porpoises and seals were devoured by the commonalty, and the 
latter knew not the art of the cooks of Louis XIV., who could so 
dress fish as to give it the taste of any flesh they pleased to fix on 
as an object of imitation. By this means, the King in Lent, 
while he obeyed the ch^jiph, enjoyed the gratification of feeling 
as though he were cheating Heaven, — and with impunity, too ! 

The most curious fish of which I have ever read, were those of 
a lake attached to a Burgundian convent, and which were always 
of the same number as the monks. If one of these sickened and 
died, the same circumstance occurred with the fish ; and if a new 
brother appeared in the refectory, there was also sure to be found 
a new denizen in the pond. These fish were, of course, piously 
inclined ; but they did not come up, in that respect, to the parrot 
of Cardinal Ascanius, which could not only repeat the Creed, but 
could maintain a thesis ! I believe that the Burgundian fish were 
principally perch ; and they are an eccentric fish. Arthur Young 



128 TABLE TEAIT3. 

says, that "about tlie year 1760, perch first appeared in all the 
lakes of Ireland and in the Shannon at the same time." 

As a singularity with respect to the cooking of fish, I may 
here mention that observed by the Romans with the sepia, or 
" cuttle-fish." They invariably took out the eyes before boiling it. 
It is in allusion to this custom that Trachalion says, in the 
HudenSj — 

" Age nunc jam, 
Jube ociilos elidere, itidem ut sepiis faciunt coquiJ 

I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle-fish was 
esteemed a fitting sacrifice to the gods ; but I do not know if pious 
people had their pet sepice, as they had their pet lambs and pigs, 
('^ Sunt domi agni et porci sacres,''^ says the orthodox husband in 
the JRudens,) reared for the purpose of being offered at the altars. 

The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for the imperial 
table. At those of Greece it was introduced by sound of trum- 
pet, and it was almost as esteemed a subject at those of Rome, 
imtil Vespasian condescended not to care for it, and to bring other 
fish into fashion. " It is caviare to the general," is a proverb which 
Shakespeare has popularized. The caviare is the roe of the stur- 
geon dried ; that of the larger sturgeon, which produces hundred- 
weights of eggs, and tons of oil, is caviare for the general, and is 
not worth eating. The delicate white n^viare is the produce of 
the smaller sturgeon, and it is highly esteemed by gastronomists. 
It forms a great portion of the food taken by the Greeks during 
their long Lent. 

We have heard of an American who tried to tame an oyster. 
The Romans were more successful with their sea-eels, which would 
come when called, and feed from the hands of men, who occa- 
sionally fattened them upon live slaves. Vedius PoUio would have 
grown sick and disgusted, if he had been asked to eat one of these 
slaves ; but he was particularly fond of the fish that had been fed 
upon such fare ; and so he only ate his slaves at second-hand ; for 
their flesh was declared by hini to have greatly improved the taste 



THE MATERIALS FOR DHnIXG. 129 

of the eel. Epicures with less ferocious appetites preferred the 
fish that had been fattened upon veal steeped in blood. Vitellius 
put the fish altogether out of fashion by only eating the roes ; 
which were procured for him at a great expense ; and Heliogabalus 
caused even the roes to cease to be modish, by forcing them upon 
the Mediterranean peasants, who got as sick of their repasts as 
English servants in the Scottish Highlands grow weary of the 
everlasting sameness of their dinners consisting of venison and 
salmon. The Egyptians placed the sea-eel in their Pantheon ; and 
even the unorthodox cannot deny that he was as good a deity as 
any to be found there ; and we are told that among the Sybarites 
the fishers and vendors of the eel were exempt from taxation ! 
The origin of these honours is, however, unknown. Nearly as 
great were offered, even in Rome, to the fish known as the sea- 
wolf, which abounded in the most filthy parts of the Tiber, and 
which some epicures distinguished by the appellation of " child 
of the gods." The Romans paid high prices for it, as they did 
for the regicide lamprey^ — a fish which killed our first Henry, and 
which Italian cooks used to kill, as the murderers did maudlin 
Clarence, in his Malmsey butt, by plunging the victim, decked for 
the sacrifice with a nutmeg in his mouth, and a clove in either 
gill, into a pan of Candian wine ; after which, covered with 
almonds, bread crumbs, and spices, he was exposed to a slow fire, 
and then to the jaws that impatiently awaited him. It was once 
as popular as the tunny, — a fish, by the way, which once so 
enriched the city of Sinope, that the coin minted there bore the 
figure of the fish. Where they are found at all, it is generally in 
shoals ; but these are never to the extent which Pliny speaks of, 
when he says, that they so obstructed the fleet of Alexander, that 
the pilots of the Macedonian madman were compelled to shape a 
diff'erent course ; and though they are to be found in something 
like abundance in the Mediterranean, yet tourists who resort 
thither must not expect to see realized the gay picture of Vernet. 
It does not appear, however, that the tunny was ever in such 
favour at ancient tables as the eel, which was greedily eaten where 
6* 



130 TABLE TEAITS. 

it was not devoutly worshipped, or wliere medical ordinances had 
not been directed against it, as unfavourable to the weak of diges- 
tion, and perilous to those affected by j)uli^o^"^ary diseases. The 
pike, emblem of fecundity and example of lengthened years, was 
still less popular. The carp, which even surpasses the pike in 
fecundity, and is a long liver to boot, was, on the other hand, an 
especial favourite, but it was served up with sauces that would cer- 
tainly not tempt a modern gastronomist to eat a fish which is 
seldom worth eating, and which is almost defiant of digestion. 
Carp, reduced to a pulp, and served up with sows' paps, and yolk 
of egg, must have been as nasty as gold fish with carrots and 
myrtle leaves, — the delight of the Roman loungers at their "Black- 
wall," on the Tiber. So the Greeks spoiled good cod by eating it 
with grated cheese and vinegar ; and the Romans made perch 
more indigestible than it was before, by swallowing Damascus 
plums with it. But the ancients had strangely accommodating 
stomachs : a sauce of honey could induce them to eat cuttle-fish. 
Garlic and cheese made the swordfish delicacies; the rhombus 
floated into Greek stomachs on a sauce of wine and brine ; the 
ladies of Rome ate onions with the muzil, and pine-nuts with the 
pilchard. The more refined Greeks, on the other hand, would not 
touch the pilchard ; and the same difl"erence of taste existed with 
regard to the loach ; while, again, both Rome and Greece united 
in admiration of the gudgeon. To neither of these countries was 
the herring known. The Scots found the fish, and the Dutch 
bought, pickled, and sold, or ate them ; and it is said, that Charles 
v., in 1536, ate a herring upon the tomb of Beuckels, the first 
Salter of that fish, and therewith the friend of the poor and 
enricher of the State. The profit realized by Holland exceeded 
two millions and a half sterling, annually. But neither Greece 
nor Rome felt the want of the herring while there was an abun- 
dant supply of the favourite oyster. This shell-fish was easily 
procured by the Greeks from Pelorus, Abydos, and Polarea ; by 
the Romans, from Brindes, the Lake of Lucrinus, Armorica, and 
even from Britain. The Romans were hardly worthy of the deli- 



THE MxiTERIALS PpK DINING. 131 

cacy, seeing that they abused it by mincing oysters, muscles, and 
sea hedgeliogs together, stewed the whole with pine-almonds and 
hot condiments, and devoured the mixture scalding ! Others, how- 
ever, ate them raw, when they were opened at table by a slave ; 
and the larger the fish, the more the Roman epicures liked them. 
They were not only eaten before a feast to stimulate the appetite, 
but during a banquet, when the appetite began to be palled. They 
excited to fresh exertion, and it was a cleaner custom (perhaps) 
than that imperial one of exonerating the stomach by tickling the 
throat with a peacock's feather. The Bordeaux oyster was the 
favourite fish of most of the Emperors. It is very inferior to the 
Whitstable oyster, however, and also to that which goes by the 
name of " Colchester," and which is not caught there. The pas- 
sion for the savoury fish is well illustrated in the epitaph which 
says, — 

" Tom 

Lies buried in these cloisters ; 
If, at the last trump, 
He does not quickly jump, 
Only cry ' Oysters P " 

If the Emperors affected oysters, the gods themselves patronized 
mussels, a dish of which was contributed by Jupiter to the wed- 
ding banquet of Hebe. The mythological sanction has, however, 
failed to render the mussel popular, and for good reasons. It is 
often extremely poisonous, and in certain conditions of the stomach 
they who eat muscles may reckon for being attacked by violent 
cutaneous disorders, painfully participated in by the oppressed 
intestines. 

It was otherwise with the tortoise, the blood of which was 
reckoned good in cases of ophthalmia, and the flesh of which was 
eagerly devoured. The natural history of the products of those 
early times seems to have been written by philosophers with very 
poetical imaginations. We read of shells of tortoises being con- 
verted into roofs of cottages, as we are told by Pliny of crawfish 
measuring four cubits in length. It was then that men ate lobsters 



132 TABLE TRAITS. 

au naturelj and crabs converted into sausages. But this latter 
dish was a more dainty one than that afforded by the frog, — the 
abhorrence of early gastronomists, but the delight of many French 
and German epicures, who first find delight in angling for these 
unclean beasts with a bait of yellow soap, and then swallowing, 
with delight more intense, the hind-quarters of the animal they 
have caught. But if the moderns swallow frogs, the ancients ate 
the polypus, and which were the nastiest even I could not tell ! 
The Eomans were especially fond of fish ; and some " fast " epi- 
cures among them not only had preserve ponds of fish on the 
roofs of their houses, but little rivulets stocked therewith around ' 
the dinner-table, whence the guests selected their fish, and delivered 
them to be cooked. 

It was once thought that the prawn, or shrimp, was somehow 
necessary to the production of soles, acting, it was believed, as a 
sort of nurse, or foster-parent, to the spawn. But this I suppose 
to be about as true as that soles always swim in pairs, with three- 
pennyworth of shrimps behind them, ready for sauce. 

I remember two anecdotes connected with fish at table, which 
a guest may retail when he is next at that period of the repast. 
Talleyrand was dining, in the year 1805, with the Minister of 
Finance, who did the honors of his house in the very best style. 
A very fine carp was on the table opposite to Talleyrand, but the 
fish was already cold. "That is a magnificent carp," said the 
financier: "how do you like it? It came from my estate of Vir- 
sur-Aisne." "Did it?" said Talleyrand, "but why did you not 
have it cooked here /" This reply was not as fatal to the utterer 
of it, as a remark once made by Poodle Byng at Belvoir Castle. 
" Ah, ah 1" he exclaimed, as he saw the fish uncovered at the Duke 
of Kutland's board, " my old friend Haddock ! I have not seen a 
haddock, at a gentleman's table, since I was a boy." The implica- 
' tion shut the gates of Belvoir on the unlucky Poodle from that 
day forward. He was never again the Duke's guest. 

Some French writers have asserted, after tracing the " vestiges 
of creation " according to a fashion of their own, that man origin- 



THE MATESTAI.S FOIJ DINING. 133 

ally sprang from the oceau ; and that his present condition is one of 
development, the consequence of life ashore, and exposure to " 
atmospheric air ! According to this theory, I suppose, Venus 
Anadyomene was the Eve of our fishy generation, and mermaids 
show the transition state, when our ancestors were of both land 
and sea, and yet properly of neither ! 

As judges of fish, the moderns are inferior to the ancients. A 
Greek or Roman epicure could, at first sight, tell in what waters 
the fish before him had been caught. This sort of wisdom is, 
however, not uncommon to oyster eaters, who swallow so greedily 
what contains little nourishment, but what may be easily digested. 
It was not unusual, some years ago, in France, for a gourmand to 
prepare for dinner by swallowing a gross, or a dozen dozen, of 
oysters ! Twelve of them, including the liquor, will weigh four 
ounces ; and the gross, four pounds (Troy) ! — a pretty amount of 
ballast to take in freight. The skin of such a feeder had need be 
in a good condition ; but so, indeed, ought that of every one who 
cares for his digestion. When we remember that a person in 
health, who takes eight pounds of aliment during twenty-four 
hours of his wakefulness, discharges five of the eight pounds 
solely through the pores by perspiration, it will at once be seen 
that to hold the skin clean, and keep the pores unobstructed, is of 
' first-rate necessity for the sake of digestion and comfort. 

There are sea-board populations who live almost exclusively on 
fish. They feed their domestic animals upon it, and with it 
manure their ground ; so that the pork that they may occasional- 
ly indulge in, acquires a fish-like flavour, and their bread is but a 
consequence of the plentiful rottenness of sprats. Such popula- 
tions are usually lean and sallow, but they are strong-muscled and 
active-limbed ; and altogether they ajQford good testimony in favour 
of the eflicacy of a fish diet, when no better is to be had. As a 
diet, fish is only so far stimulating that it augments the Ijnoaph 
rather than renews the blood. It is a puzzle to many gastronomic 
philosophers that fish was so constant a diet of the monkish orders. 
Its heating quality hardly suited men who were required to be 



134: TABLE TRAITS. 

ever coolly contemplative. But this matter I leave to the philoso- 
phers to determine. One of them, — that is, a gastronomic philo- 
sopher, — M. Fayot, says, that " if you would have a dinner com- 
posed altogether of fish, the meal should consist of a " turbot, a 
large salmon done in a court-bouillon, flanked with aromatic herbs, 
and covered with a fresh winding-sheet of delicate seasoning. In 
such dinners, sea-fish have, undoubtedly, the first rank ; and among 
them the Cherbourg lobster, the shrimp of Houfleur^ the cray-fish 
of the Seine, and the smelts of that river's mouth, and numerous 
fresh-water fish mingle agreeably. Salmon and turbot should be 
done briskly ; drink afterwards a glass of those old wines which 
give a digestive action to the stomach." With M. Fayot, the 
turbot is " the king of fish, especially in Lent, as it is then of most 
majestic size. You may serve up salmon with as much ornament 
as you will, but a turbot asks for nothing but aristocratic simplici- 
ty. On the day after he makes his first appearance, it is quite 
another afi'air. It may then be disguised ; and the best manner 
of efiecting this is, to dress him a la Bechamel, — a preparation 
thus called from the Marquis de Bechamel, who, in the reign of 
Louis XIV., for ever immortalized himself by this one ragout^ 

The Almanack des Gourmands speaks of a Lorraine carp 
which was fed on bread and wine, and which was twice sent to the 
Paris market, in the care of a courier who travelled by the mail. 
It returned to its native waters in default of a purchaser willing to 
give thirty louis-d^ors for the monstrous delicacy. This was when 
fish dinners were much in vogue in Paris. There was then a 
tahle-dlibte for a fish repast only, held at a house profanely called, 
" The Name of Jesus." This house stood in the " Cloitre St. 
Jacques de I'llopital," and every Wednesday and Friday it was 
crowded by the Clergy, who dined magnificently on maigre fare, 
for about 2s. a head. It is of one of these Fayot recounts a 
pleasant story, the locality, however, of which was the Rocher de 
Cancale. A certain Abbe dined there so copiously of salmon 
that a fit of indigestion was the consequence. Some days after- 
wards, v/hen celebrating Mass, the savoury memories of the fish 



THE M.'iTErvIzy[.S FOK DESrETG. 135 

flocked into his mind ; and he was heard to murmur, not the mea 
culpa of the " Confiteor^^'^ but, as he quietly beat his breast, " Ah ! 
that capital salmon ! that capital salmon !" 

Of the more nutriti-ve species of fish, turbot, cod, whiting, had- 
dock, flounder, and sole, are the least heating. Of these, the cod 
is the least easy of digestion, though turbot is quite as difficult of 
digestion when much lobster sauce is taken with it. The crimp- 
ing of cod facilitates the digestion of the fish. Sole and whiting- 
are easily digested. Salmon is nutritive, but it is oily, heating, and 
not very digestible ; far less so than salmon trout. The favourite 
parts of most of these fish are the least fit for weak stomachs, and 
the most trying to strong ones. Salmon, caught after the spawn- 
ing season has commenced, is almost poisonous; and eels are 
objectionable at all seasons, from their excessive oiliness. Shell- 
fish generally may be put down as " indigestible," particularly the 
under-boiled lobsters, of the London market. The mussel is espe- 
cially so ; and these are not rendered innocuous by the removal of 
the beard, which is not more hurtful than any other part. Shell- 
fish, and, indeed, fish generally, affects the skin, by sympathy with 
the stomach. The effect is, sometimes, as if a poison had been 
generated: at others it very sensibly affects the odour of the 
cutaneous secretions. The effect was thoroughly understood when 
the Levitical Priests, like those of Egypt, were prohibited from 
eating fish. The prohibition was based upon a just principle. 

The Egyptian and Levitical Priests were more obedient to such 
prohibitions than St. Patrick, who once, overcome by hunger, 
helped himself to pork chops on a fast-day. An angel met him 
with the forbidden cutlets in his hand ; but the saint popped them 
into a pail of water, pattered an Ave-Mary over them, and our 
indulgent Lady heeded the appeal by turning them into a couple 
of respectable and orthodox-looking trout. The angel looked per- 
plexed, and went away, with his index finger on the side of his 
nose. And see what came of it ! In Ireland, meat dipped into 
water, and christened by the name of " St. Patrick's Fish," is com- 
monly eaten there even on fast-days, and to the great regret of all 
those who eat greedily enough to acquire an indigestion. 



136 TABLE TKAITS. 

St. Patrick's fish ought to have fetched as high a price as the 
four cod which formed the sole supply in Billings-gate-market on 
one of the great frost-days in January, 1809 ; they were sold to 
one dealer for fourteen guineas. During the same month, salmon 
were sold at a guinea a pound ! When fish is so "high-priced, it is 
time to have done with it. So enlevez ! and let us to the succeed- 
ing courses of viands more substantial. While the fish is being 
removed, I will merely relate that it was the practice of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, who gave plentiful dinners to admirable men, in his 
house in Leicester-square, always to choose his own fish, of which 
he was a capital judge. He was, on those occasions, ever the first 
visitor to the fish-shop still existing, in its primitive simplicity, in 
Coventry-street. He selected the best ; and later in the day, his 
niece. Miss Palmer, used to call, dispute the price, and pay for the 
fish. Sir Joshua's table is said to have been too crowded, both as 
to guests and dishes, while there was scant attendance, and a diffi- 
culty of getting served ; but the hilarity compensated for all. The 
guests enjoyed themselves with a vulgar delight that w\>uld have 
very much ruffled the dignity of such a pompous president at 
repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and bepowdered Sir Peter Lely. 

With the introduction of animal food is dated the era of pro- 
fessional cooks ; and that era itself is set down by M. Soyer, a com- 
petent authority, as having commenced in the year of the world 
1656. Other authorities give 2412 as the proper date, when Pro- 
metheus, or Fore-thought, as his name implies, taught men the use 
of fire, and cooked an ox. But I think that both dates and my- 
thology are somewhat loose here, and that the period is easier of 
conjecture than of determination. Ceres killed the pig that 
devoured her corn, Bacchus the goat that nibbled at the tendrils 
of the vine, and Jupiter the ox that swallowed his sacred cakes ; 
and the animals slain by deities were roasted and eaten by men. 
Another tradition is, that roast meat originally smoked only on the 
altars of the gods, and that the Priests lived on the pretended 
sacrifices, until some lean and greedy heretic, having wickedly 
pilfered the sacred viands, so improved under the diet, that his 
example was promptly followed, and men took to animal food, in 



THE MATERIALS FOE DINING. 137 

spite of the thunder of gods and the anathemas of Priests. I 
need not say where there is better authority than all these pretty 
tales for man's subduing to his use and service the beasts of the 
earth, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea. 

A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristocrat in his 
way. The gods looked after his herds, and the law gave its pro- 
tection where Olympian divinity so often proved worthless. Bubona 
sat the watchful goddess of their fattening ; and it was she who 
blessed the cabbages steeped in vinegar'J the straw and wheat-bran, ■ 
and the bruised barley, wherewith the oxen were prepared for the 
cattle-show or the market. In the latter, the office of the Roman 
Prefect fixed the selling price : the breeder could neither ask more 
nor take less than according to the official tarifi*. There was a 
singular custom at one time in Rome, which proves, however, that 
the seller had a voice in declaring the value of his stock. Pur- 
chaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and then suddenly opened 
one of their hands, or some of the fingers. If the number of 
fingers on both sides was even, the vendor obtained the price which 
he had previously asked for his meat ; but if the number was 
uneven, the buyer received the ^aands for the sum he had just 
before tendered. This was as singular a custom as, and a more 
honest one than, that adopted by the first Dutch settlers in America. 
In their trading vrith the Indians a Dutchman's fist was established 
as the standard of weight, with this understanding, that when a 
Dutchman was selling to an Indian his fist weighed a pound, but 
that it should only be half that weight when the Hollander was a 
purchaser 1 

The Roman markets were well supplied, and the pig seems to 
have been the national favourite. The Emperors used to distribute 
thousands of pounds of pork to the poor, as on festive occasions 
wo, less magnificently, divide among the needy our time-honoured 
English roast beef. There was even an edict against making sau- 
sages of any thing hut pork, — an edict which is much needed in 
some of our suburbs, where " pork sausages " are made of any 
thing but pig ; — and, after all, they could not be made of a dirtier 



138 TABLE TEAITS. 

animal. But tlie grave Romans strangely reverenced tliis unclean 
beast. Pliny places liim only one degree below humanity ; and cer- 
ta,inly tbe porcine and human stomachs are very much alike ! In 
the East, our ancient friend was a Pariah, and his position among 
the unclean was fixed by a Jewish doctor, who said, that if ten 
measures of leprosy were flung into the world, nine of them would 
naturally fall to the execrated pig. There is no doubt that the 
eating of the flesh of the pig in hot climates would bring on dis- 
eases in the human system akin to leprosy ; and this fact may have 
tended to establish the unpopularity of the animal throughout the 
East, and to count also for the prohibition. Galen, however, pre- 
scribed it as good food for people who fforked hard ; and there 
ire modem practitioners who maintain that it is the most easily 
digested of all meats. It is certainly more easy of digestion than 
that respectable impostor, the boiled chicken, which used so cruelly 
to test, and defy, the feeble powers of invalids. 

Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until they had 
attained nearly the bulk of the elephant. These fetched prices of 
the most " fancy " description ; and they wT,re served up whole, 
with an entire IN'oah's-ark collection of smaller animals inside, by 
way of stufling. A clever cook could so dress this meat as to 
make it have the flavour of any other viand ; and the first culinary 
artistes of the day prided themselves on the preparation of a 
ragout composed of young pigs stifled before they were littered. 
The mother would have had no difficulty in performing this feat 
herself for her ov/n young, if sows generally had been as huge as 
the one mentioned by Varro, and which he says was so fat as to 
be incapable of movement, and to be unconscious that a mouse, 
with a young family, had settled in the folds of her fat, where they 
lived like mites in cheese. 

In another page, I have spoken of what were called " the sacred 
pigs and lambs." Mensechmus, in Plautus, asks the price ,of the 
'■'■porci sacres, sincerir " Sacres " was applied to all animals in- 
tended for immolation. The sinceri porci were the white and spot- 
less pigs oftered to the Lares on behalf of the insane. The merchant 
who gives instruction, in the Pseudolus^ to his servant, as to the 



THE MATERIALS FOE DINING. 139 

splendid repast that is to be served up on his birthday, is very 
particular on the subject of pork ; and he shows us what parts form 
a dish that might tempt princes, — the ham, and the head: 
'''• Pernam^ callum^ glandium, sumen^facito in aqua jaceanty 

If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of pork, the 
reason, perhaps, was, that the ox was religiously reverenced, be- 
cause, of his use to man, whereas the pig was really of no value at 
all but for consumption. The excellence of the ox as food was, 
nevertheless, very early ascertained, and acted on by some primi- 
tive people. The Jews were permitted to eat of that of which 
Abraham had offered a portion to angels ; and calf and ox were 
alike an enjoined food. The Greeks, too, devoured both with 
much complacency, as th*ey also did tripe, which was deemed a 
dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for tripe there was an ancient and 
long-standing propensity among the early nations. It formed the 
chief dish at the banquets of men w^ho met to celebrate the victory 
of mortals and gods over the sacrilegious Titans. 

The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars and 
humble tables. The Greeks were especially fond of both, and the 
. Romans were like them in this respect ; but the Egyptians reli- 
giously abstained from the kid ; and more than one Eastern nation 
held, as of faith, that the lamb was more fitting as an .offering to 
the gods than as a dish for men. On the other hand, there were 
jDeople who preferred the flesh of the ass, which was not an uncom- 
mon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, were served as a dainty ; 
for Hippocrates had recommended them as a refined food ; and 
the Greeks swallowed the diet thus authoritatively described. The 
Romans, however, are said to have eaten the dog out of veilgeance. 
The curs of the Capitol were slee^^ing, when the sacred and watch- 
ful geese saved it by their cackling ; and thence arose, it is believ- 
ed, the avenging appetite with which puppies, dressed like hares, 
were tossed into the stomachs of the unforgiving Romans. They 
were also sacrificed to the Dog-star. 

It is worthy of remark, that Mexico was partly conquered by 
aid of the pig. Cortez was in need of supplies of fresh meat on 



14:0 TABLE TRAITS. 

Ms march, and lie took witli liim a large herd of sv/ine, — sows 
as well as pigs, — " these animals being very suitable for a long 
journey, on account of their endurance of fatigue, and because 
they multiply greatly." The Indians, on most occasions, however, 
appear to' have been able to have supplied him plentifully : for we 
read, that at Campeche, for instance, in return for his presents, 
they placed before him partridges, turtle-doves, goslings, cocks, 
hares, stags, and other animals which were good to eat, and bread 
made from Indian corn, and fruits. It was, for all the world, 
like meeting a burglar at your dining-room door, and asking him 
to stay and take breakfast, before he went off with the plate ! 

When the uncle of Job entertained his heavenly visitors, the 
dish he placed before them was " roasted veal," of a freshly killed 
calf. It was tender, because the muscular fibres had not had time 
to become stiff; and its pleasant accompanunents were melted 
butter, milk, and meal-cakes. Veal is the national dish of Ger- 
many, where mutton is scarce, and calves abundant. It is poor 
food at any time ; but the German veal is the most tasteless of 
meats. There, indeed, is applicable the smart saying of that 
ardent young experimentalist, who declared that eating veal was 
as insipid an enjoyment as kissing one's sister ! Cardinal Zinzen- 
dorf used to denounce pork quite strongly. He deemed pigs to 
have been of no use but for their blood, of which he himself used 
to make a bath for his legs, whenever he had the gout. Quixote 
Bowles, on the other hand, held pig, in any form, to be the 
divinest of meats, and the animal the happiest of all created 
things. With true Apician fervour, he would travel any distance 
to feast^on the sight of a fatted porker ; and a view of that prize 
of Prince Albert's, which was so uniformly huge that, at first 
sight, it was difficult to distinguish the head from the tail, would 
have made him swoon with gentle ecstasy. Bowles was an 
epicure in bacon ; and, whenever he went out to dinner, he took 
a piece of it, of his own curing, in his pocket, and requested the 
cook to dress it. The people of the Society Islands carry respect 
for pigs even beyond the compass of Bowles. They believe that 



THE MATERIALS FOK DINING. 141 

there is a distinct heaven for the porcine souls ; and this paradise 
of pigs is called by them " Ofatuna." The Polynesian pig . is cer- 
tainly a more highly favoured animal than his cousin in Ireland ; 
for, in a Polynesian farm household, every pig has his proper 
name, as regularly as every member of the family. Perhaps, the 
strangest cross of pigs ever heard of, was that of Mr. Tinney's 
famous breed for porkers, — Chinese, crossed by a half-African 
boar : the meat was said to be delicious. Finally, with respect to 
pigs, they are connected with a popular expletive, with which 
they have, in reality, nothing to do. " Please the pigs !" is shown, 
I think by Southey in his Espriella, to be a corruption of "Please 
the pyx 1" The pyx is the receptacle which contains the conse- 
crated wafer on Romish altars ; and the exclamation is equal to 
"Please God!" The corruption is as curious a one as that of 
" tawdry," from " 't Audrey," or St. Audrey's fair, famous for the 
sale of frippery, — showy, cheap, and worthless. 

They who are half as particular about mutton as Quixote 
Bowles was about pork, would do well to remember, that sheep 
continue improving as long as their teeth remain sound, which is 
usually six years ; and that, at all events up to this time, the older 
the mutton, the finer the flavour. A spayed ewe, kept five years 
before she is fattened, is superior to any wether mutton. Dr. 
Paris, however, states that wedder mutton is in perfection at five 
years old, and ewe mutton at two jeavs ; but he acknowledges 
that the older is the more digestible. It is the glory of one local- 
ity, famous for its sheep, that the rot was never known to be 
caught upon the South Downs. It is further said, that a marsh, 
occasionally overflowed with salt water, was never known to rot 
sheep. A curious fact is stated by Young, in his " Survey of Sus- 
sex ;" namely, that Lord Egremont had, in his park, three large 
flocks of the Hereford, South-Down, and Dishley breeds ; and 
that these three flocks kept themselves perfectly distinct, although 
each had as much opportunity of mixing with the others as they 
had with themselves. 

I have alluded, in another page, to a circumstance first noticed, 



142 TABLE TRAITS. 

I believe, by Madame Dacier, — that there is no mention of boiled 
meat, as food, throughout Homer's Iliad. The fair commentator 
is right ; but " boiling " is, nevertheless, used by the poet as a 
simile. When (in the twenty-first book) ISTeptune applies his 
flames to check the swelling fury of Scamander, — 

" The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound, 
As when the flames beneath a caldron rise, 
To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice. 
Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires 
The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires : 
So boils th' imprisoned flood, forbid to flow, 
And, choked with vapours, feels his bottom glow i" 

This is not a very elegant version of the original, it must be 
confessed, albeit the translation is Pope's. It is, however, the 
only reference to boiling to be found in Homer, and here the fat 
of the sacrifice boiled down is that of a pig. 

Kvicrcrri Ke^dojievog anaXorpe^eog atakoto. 

I do not know that I can take leave of mutton and the meats 
by doing them greater honour than by mentioning that Napoleon 
ate hastily of mutton before he entered on the contest at Leipsic, 
and he lost the triumph of the bloody day through a fit of indi- 
gestion. 

Before the era of kitchen gardens, scurvy was one of the pro- 
cesses by which the English population was kept down. Cab- 
bages were not known here until, the period of Henry VIII. ; and 
turnips are so comparatively new to some parts of England, that 
their introduction into the northern counties is hardly a century 
old. A diet exclusively of animal food is too highly stimulant 
for such a climate as ours ; and an exclusively vegetable diet is 
far less injurious in its effects. No meat is so digestible as tender 
mutton. It has just that degree of consistency which the stomach 
requires. Beef is not less nutritious, but it is rather less easy of 
digestion, than mutton ; much, however, depends upon the cook- 
ing, which process may, really not inaptly, be called the first 



THE MATERIALS FOB DINING. 143 

stage of digestion. The comparative indigestibility of larab and 
veal arises from the meat being of a more stringy and indivisible 
nature. Old laws ordained that butchers should expose no beef 
for sale, but of an animal that bad been baited. The nature of 
the death rendered the flesh more tender. A coursed hare is 
thus more delicious eating than one that bas been shot ; and pigs 
whipped till tbey die, may be eaten with relish, even by young 
ladies who pronounce life intolerable. A little vinegar, adminis- 
tered to animals about to be killed, is said, also, to render the 
flesh less tough ; and it is not unusual to give a spoonful of this 
acid to poultry, whose life is required for the immediate benefit of 
the consumer. Some carnivorous animals have been very expert 
at famishing their own larder. Thus we read, that the eagles in 
Norway exhibit as much cunning in procuring their beef as can 
well be imagined ; and more, perhaps, than can well be beheved. 
They dive into the sea we are told, then roll in the sand, and 
afterwards destroy an ox by shaking the sand in his eyes, while 
they attack him. I think the French eagle tried a similar plan 
with the English bull, during the w^ars of the Empire, and very 
inefiectually. It dived into the sea, and rolled itself in the sand 
at Boulogne, and shook abundance of it across the Channel ; but 
the English bull more quietly shook it off again from his 
mane, and the eagle turned to an easier quarry in Austria. 
Animals not carnivorous have sometimes been as expert. 
There have been horses, for instance, who have had their peculiar 
appetite also for meat. Some twenty years ago, we heard of one 
at Brussels, which, fond of flesh generally, was particularly so of 
raw mutton, w^hich it would greedily devour whenever it could get, 
as it sometimes did, at a butcher's shop. 

The Jews, it is said, never ate poultry under their old dispensa- 
tion ; and French gastronomists asert that this species of food was 
expressly reserved to enrich the banquets of a more deser^dng 
people. About the merits of the people the poultry, and winged 
animals generally, w^ould perhaps have an opinion of their own, 
were they capable of entertaining one ; for now^here, as in France, 



144 TABLE TRAITS. 

have those unfortunate races been so tortured, and merely in order 
to extract out of their anguish a Httle more exquisite enjoyment 
for the palled appetites of epicures. The turkey has, perhaps, the 
least suffered at the hands of the Gallic experimentalists, though 
he has not altogether escaped. The goose has been the most 
cruelly treated, especially in the case of his being kept caged 
before a huge fire, and fed to repletion until he dies, the Daniel 
Lambert of his species, of a diseased liver, which is the most deli- 
cious thing possible in a pie. But it is ignoble treatment for the 
only bird which is said to be prescient of approaching earth- 
quakes. The goose saved Rome, and was eaten in spite of his 
patriotism. He is skilled in natural philosophy, and his science 
does not save him from death and sage-and-onions. Nay, even a 
female Sovereign of England could not hear of the defeat of the 
Spanish Armada without decreeing "death to the geese," until 
the time comes when Mr. Macaulay's Huron friend shall be stand- 
ing on a fragment of Blackfriar's Bridge, sketching the ruins of 
St. Paul's. 

It must be allowed, however, that the scientific ladies of farm- 
yards have improved upon the knowledge of their ancestresses. 
Formerly, of turkeys alone, full one-half that pierced the shell 
perished ; but now we rear more than fifteen out of twenty. I do 
not know, however, that that fact is at all consolatory to the turkey 
destined to be dined upon. 

Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be yearly com- 
memorated by a cock-fight ; and the bird itself was eaten out of 
honour, as dogs in Rome were for reasons of vengeance. At 
Rome, the hen was the favourite bird ; but hens were consumed ' 
in such quantities, that Fannius, the Consul, issued a decree pro- 
hibiting their being slain for food, during a certain period ; and, 
in the meantime, the Romans " invented the capon." The duck 
was devoured medicinally, that is, on medical assurance that it 
was good diet for weak stomachs ; and there were great sages 
who not only taught that duck, as a food, would m.aintain men in 
health, but that, if they were ill, the ample feeding thereon would 



THE MATEEIAJLS FOE DINING. 145 

soon restore them again. Mithridates, it is alleged, ate it as a 
counter-poison ; other people, of other times and' places, simply 
because they liked it. The goose was in as much favour as the 
duck with the digestion-gifted stomachs of the older races. It 
was the royal diet in Egypt, where the Monarch did not, like 
Queen Elizabeth, recommend it to the people, but selfishly 
decreed that it was only to be served at his own table. Gigantic 
geese, with ultra-gigantic livers, were as much the delight of epi- 
cures in Rome, as the livers, if not the geese, are now the voluptas 
suprema of the epicure of France, and of countries subject to the 
French code of diet. A liver weighing as much as the rest of the 
animal without it, was a morceau^ in Rome, to make a philoso- 
pher's mouth water. This was not proof of a more depraved 
taste than that exhibited by a Christian Queen of France, who 
spent sixteen hundred francs in fattening three geese, the delicate 
livers of which alone Her Majesty intended to dine upon. The 
pigeon and guinea-hen never attained to such popularity as the 
goose and duck ; while the turkey, and especially the truffled tur- 
key-hen, has its value suflBciently pointed out by the saying of the 
gastronome, that there must be two at the eating of a truffled tur- 
key, — the eater and the turkey ! The turkey, originally from the 
East, was slowly propagated in Europe, and the breed appears to 
have gradually passed away, like the bustard in England. It was 
brought hither again from America, and its first re-appearance is 
said to have been at the wedding-dinner of Charles IX. of France. 

The turkey was not protected, as the peacock was by Alexander, 
by a decree denouncing death against whomsoever should kill this 
divine bird, with its devilish note. The decree did not affect 
Quintus Hortensius, who had one served up at the dinner which 
celebrated his accession to the oflSce of Augur. Tiberius, however, 
preserved the peacock with great jealousy, and it was only rich 
breeders that could exhibit this bird at their banquets. 

A man who passes through Essex may see whole " herds " of 
geese and ducks in the fields there, fattening without thought of 
the future, and supremely happy in their want of reflection. These 
7 



146 TABLE TKAITS. 

birds are " foreigners ;" at least, nearly all of them are so. They 
are Irish by birth, but they are brought over by steam, in order 
to be perfected by an English education ; and when the due state 
of perfection has been attained, they are, like many other young 
people partaking of the " duck " or the " goose," transferred to 
London, and " done for." 

Some gastronomic enthusiasts, unable to wait for their favourite 
birds, have gone in search of them. This was the case with the 
oily Jesuit, Fabi, who so loved beccaficoes. " As soon as the cry 
of the bird was heard in the fields around Belley," says the author 
of the " Physiologie du Gout^^'' " the general cry was, ' The becca- 
ficoes are come, we shall have soon Father Fabi among us.' And 
never did he fail to arrive, with a friend, on the 1st of September. 
They came for the express purpose of regaling themselves on bec- 
caficoes, during the period of the passage of the bird across the 
district. ■ To every house they were invited in town, and they took 
their departure again about the 23rd." This good Father died in 
our "glorious memory" year of 1688 ; and one of his choice bits 
of delirium was, that he had discovered the circulation of the 
blood before Harvey I 

And now do I not hear that gentleman-like person at the lower 
end of the table remark, that the circulation of the blood was a 
conceived idea long before Harvey? You are quite right, my 
dear Sir ; and your remark is a very appropriate one, both as to 
time and theme, for the circulation of the blood is one of the 
results of cooking. As for preconception of the idea, it is suffi- 
cient for Harvey, that he demonstrated the fact. The Doctors of 
ancient Roman days supposed that the blood came from the liver; 
and that, in passing through the vena cava and its branches, a 
considerable quantity of it turned about, and entered into the 
right cavity of the heart. "What Harvey demonstrated was, that 
the blood flows from the heart into all parts of the body, by the 
arteries, from whence it is brought back to the heart again, by the 
veins. Well, Sir, I know what you are about to remark, — that 
Paolo Sarpi, that pleasantest of table-companions, claimed to have 



THE MATERIALS FOK DINING. 147 

made the demonstration before Harvey. True, Sarpi used to say, 
that he did not dare publish his discovery, for dread of the Inqui- 
sition ; but that he confided it to brother Fabi da Aqua-pendente, 
who kept it close for the same reason, but told it in confidence to 
Harvey, who published it as his own. Well, Sir, Sir George Ent 
exploded all that, by proving that Sarpi himself had fii'st learned 
the fact from Harvey's lips. The Italians have the same right in 
this case, as they have to their boast of having produced what old 
Ritson used to style, "that thing you choose to call a poem, 'Para- 
dise Lost.' " It was an invention or discovery at second-hand. 

What conceits Cowley has in his verses on Harvey ! He makes 
the philosophical Doctor pursue coy Nature through sap, and catch 
her at last in the human blood. He speaks, too, of the heart 
beating tuneful marches to its vital heat ; a conceit which Long- 
fellow twisted into prettiness, when he said, that our " muffled 
hearts were beating funeral marches to the grave." You will 
remember. Sir, that Shakespeare makes Brutus say, that Portia 
was to him " dear as the drops that visit this sad heart." Brutus 
himself, would, perhaps, have said " liver ;" and, by the way, how 
very much to the same tune is the line in Gray's " Bard," wherein 
we find, — 

" Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes." 

But there is in tuneful Edmund, in our ever-glorious friend Spen- 
ser, a stanza which contains something that may pass for the 
circulation theory. You remember, in the first canto of the 
Second Book, where the bleeding lady is found by the good Sir 
Guyon : — 

" Out of her gored wound the cruel steel 

He lightly snatch'd, and did the flood-gates stop 

With his faire garment ; then 'gan softly feel 
Her feeble pulse, to prove if any drop 
Of living blood yet in her veynes did hop ; 

"Which when he felt to move, he hoped faire 
To call back life to her forsaken shop. 

So well he did her deadly wounds repaire, 

That at the last shee 'gan to breathe out living aire." 



148 TABLE TKAITS. 

And now, Sir, I shall be happy to take a glass of wine with 
you, obsolete as that once honoured custom has become. And 
allow me to send you a slice of this venison. A little more of the 
fat ? Certainly ; but, if you will take currant jelly with it, the sin 
be upon your own head. It has always been the approved plan, 
you say. Ah, my dear Sir ! think what the approved plan was, 
for years, in the treatment of small-pox. That was not a gastro- 
nomic matter, you say ? I am not so sure of that; for the patient, 
swathed in scarlet cloth, had to drink mulled port wine. But, on 
a question of diet, time and numbers, you think, may be taken for 
authority. Alas, my dear Sir ! did you ever try the once popular 
receipt of Apicius for a thick sauce to roasted chicken ? Never ! 
of course you have not; for, in such case, your young widow would 
already have touched that pretty life-assurance we wot of. Eng- 
lish tastes, you urge ? Ah ! in that case, if old rule be good rule, 
you must camp in Kensington Gardens, and eat acorns. In Ger- 
many, where venison is a national dish, the idea of currant jelly 
would ruin the digestion of a whole company. But I see you are 
incorrigible, and William is at your elbow with the doubtful 
sauce. 

Galen could not appreciate venison as the early Patriarchs and 
the Jewish people did, and as the Roman ladies did, who ate of 
it as a preserver of youth, as well as a lengthener of life. A roe- 
buck of Melos would have brought tears of delight into the eyes 
of Diogenes. The deer was preferred to the roebuck at Rome ; 
but the wild boar was also a favourite ; and the Sicilian slave, chef 
to Servilius Rullus, cooked not less than three of different sizes in 
one. The largest had baskets of dates suspended to its tusks, and 
a litter of young ones in pastry lying in the same dish. Within 
the first was a second, within the second a third, and within the 
third some small birds. Cicero, who was the guest for whom the 
dinner was got up, was as delighted with the culinary slave, as 
LucuUus had been a few days before, when he had eaten a dish 
of sows' paps prepared by the same artist; and the enraptured 
gastronome thought that all Olympus was dissolving in his 
mouth ! 



THE MATERIALS FOE DINING. 149 

A wild boar was at marriage feasts what our wedding cates 
are at those dreadful destroyers of time and digestion, — wedding 
breakfasts, — an indispensable accompaniment. Caranus, the Mace- 
donian, has the reputation of having exceeded all others in his 
nuptial magnificence ; for, instead of one boar at his banquet, he 
had twenty. But I have seen more than that at many a break- 
fast in Britain. 

The ancient Britons abstained from the hare, like the Jews. 
Hij^pocrates held that, as a food, it thickened the blood, and kept 
people from sleep ; but Galen — and such instances among the 
faculty are not uncommon — differed from his professional brother. 
People followed the advice of Galen ; and though few, like Alex- 
ander Severus, could eat a whole hare at every repast, yet many 
ate as plentifully as they well could, accounting such diet profitable 
both to health and good looks. 

Hares were nearly as injuriously abundant in Greece as rabbits 
were in Spain, where the latter animals are said to have once 
destroyed Tarragona, by undermining it in burrowing ! ^ay, 
more : the Balearic Isles w^ere so overrun with them, that the 
inhabitants, afraid of being devoured, sent an embassy to Eome ; 
and Augustus dispatched a military force, which not only slaugh- 
tered the enemy, but ate the half of them ! The more refined glut- 
tons of Rome did not dine on the rabbit after this fashion. They 
only picked a little of the young taken alive from the slaughtered 
mother, or killed soon after birth. They were preferable to the 
rabbits of the Parisian gargottes^ where fricassee de lapins is invari- 
ably made of cats. And these, perhaps, are as dainty eating as 
the hunch of the camel, or the feet of the elephant, — pettitoes for 
Brobdignagian lovers to sup upon. 

But we almost as vilianously disguise our poultry. The latter, 
if not noiu^ used — according to Darwin — to be fed for the London 
market, by mixing gin, and even opium, with their food, and keep- 
ing them in the dark ; but " they must be killed as soon as they 
are fattened, or they become weak and emaciated, like human 
drunkards." 



160 TABLE TEAITS. 

Game was almost as sacred to tlie Egyptian Priests, as eggs to 
the sacerdotal gentlemen of some of the modern tribes of Africa. 
Under the head of " game," we no longer admit the birds which, 
according to Belon, figured at the gastronomic tables of France in 
the sixteenth century. These were the crane, the crow, and the 
cormorant, the heron, the swan, the stork, and the bittern. The 
last-named bird was in high estimation, although the taste for it 
was confessedly an " acquired" one. The larger birds of prey were 
not then altogether despised by epicures, some of whom could sit 
down with an appetite to roast vulture, while they turned with 
loathing from the plump pheasant. 

This eastern bird, however, has, with this exception, enjoyed a 
deserved reputation from the earliest ages. The Egyptian Kings 
kept large numbers of them to grace their aviaries and their tri- 
umphs. The Greeks reared them for the less sentimental gratifi- 
cation of the stomach ; and a simple Athenian republican, when 
giving a banquet, prided himself on ha^dng on his board as many 
pheasants as there were guests invited. 

Pheasants' brains were among the ingredients of the dish that 
Vitellius invented, and which he designated by the name of 
" Shield of Minerva." They were greedily eaten by many others 
of the Caesars ; and an offering of them to the statue of Caligula 
was deemed to be propitiatory of that very equivocal deity. The 
Emperors generally esteemed them above partridges, which v/ere 
trained for fighting, as well as fattened for eating. Roman epicures 
fixed on the breast as the most " eatable " portion of the gallant 
bird. The Greeks thought of it as we do of the woodcock ; and 
with them the leg of the partridge was the part the most highly 
esteemed. At a Greek table would not have occurred the smart 
dialogue which is said to have taken place at an English dinner. 
" Shall I send you a leg or a wing ?" said a carver to a guest he 
was about to help. " It is a matter of perfect indifference to me," 
was the reply ; and it is not a courteous one. " It is a matter of 
equal indifference to me," said the first speaker, at the same time 
resuming his own knife and fork, and going on with his dinner. 

Quails are variously said either to have recalled Hercules to life, 



THE MATERIALS FOS DUSTING. 161 

or to have cured Lim of ej^ilepsj. The Romans, however, rather 
feared them, asiending to cause epileptic fits. Galen thought so ; 
Aristotle took a different view, and the Greeks devoured them as 
readily as though they had Aristotle's especial authorization ; and 
the Romans were only slowly converted to the same way of think- 
ing. Quails, like partridges and the game-cock, were long reared 
for the arena ; and legislators thought that youth might learn cour- 
age from contemplating the contests of quails ! 

The thrush v^as perhaps the most popular bird at delicate tables 
in Greece. They were kept from the young, lest the taste should 
give birth to permanent greediness ; but when a girl married, she 
was sure of a brace of thrushes, for her especial eating at the 
wedding-feast. They were still more popular in Rome, where patri- 
cian ladies reared thousands yearly for the market, and made a ftir- 
ther profit by selling the manure for the land. The thrush aviary 
of Varro's aunt was one of the sights of Rome, where men ruined 
themselves in procuring dishes composed of these birds for their 
guests. Greatly, however, as- they abounded, there was occasion- 
ally a scarcity of them ; for when the physician of Pompey pre- 
scribed a thrush, by way of exciting the wayward stomach of the 
wayward soldier to enjoyment, there was not one to be found for 
sale in all Rome. LucuUus, indeed, had scores of them; but 
Pompey, like many other obstinate people, chose rather to sufier 
than put himself under an obligation ; and he contrived to get 
well on other diet. 

The diet was, nevertheless, held to be exceedingly strengthening ; 
and blackbirds, also, were prescribed as fitting food for weak diges- 
tions. It was perhaps for this reason that the celebrated 

" Four-and-twenty black-birds baked in a pie," 

were the dainty dish set before the legendary and, presumedly, dys- 
peptic King ! In later times, we have had as foolish ideas con- 
nected with them. The oil in which they were cooked was said to 
be good for sciatica, or hipgout ; and Vieillot says that freckles 



152 TABLS TRxlITS. 

miglit be instantaneously removed from the skin, if but ladies 

would never try what Vieillot recommends. 

The blackbird was not imperially patronized. The stomachs of 
the gastronomic Caesars gave more greedy welcome to the flamingo. 
Caligula, Vitellius, and Heliogabalus ruined their digestions by 
ragouts of this bird, the tongues of which were converted into a 
stimulating sauce. Dampier ate the bird, when he could get nothing 
else ; and thought the Caesars fools for doing so when they could 
get anything beside. The ancients, whether Greeks or Romans 
showed more taste in eating beccaficoes, — that delicate little bird, 
all tender and succulent, the essence of the juice of the fruits 
(especially the fig) on which it feeds. The only thing to be com- 
pared with it is the ortolan. Had Heliogabalus confined himself 
to these more savoury birds, instead of acquiring indigestion on 
ostrich brains and flamingoes, his name would have held a more 
respectable place in the annals of gastronomy. But master and 
people were alike barbarous in many of their tastes. Who now 
would think of killing turtle-doves for the sake of eating their 
legs " devilled V and yet we eat the lark, that herald of the skies, 
and earliest chorister of the morn. We eat this ethereal bird with 
as little compunction as we do the savoury, yet unclean, of the 
earth, earthy, duck. And this thought reminds me of a story, for 
which I am indebted to a friend, himself the most amiable of 
Amphitryons, the good things at whose table have ever wit, wisdom^ 
mirth, and good-fellowship attendant, as aids to digestion.* 



A LIGHT DINNER FOR TWO. 

Many years ago, when railways were things undreamt of, and 
when the journeys from Oxford to the metropolis were inevitably 
performed on that goodly and pleasant high road which is now 
dreary and forlorn, a gentleman and his son, the latter newly 
flushed with College fame and University honours, rode forth over 
Magdalen Bridge and the Cherwell, purposing to reach London in 

* Henry Holden Frankum, Esq. 



A LIGHT DIX5TER FOPw TVfO. 153 

a leisurely ride. A groom, their only attendant, carrying their 
scanty baggage with him on a good stout cob, had been sent on 
in advance to order dinner at a well-known road-side hostelry, 
where Oxford nags baited, and where their more adventurous 
riders frequently caroused, out of reach of any supervision by 
Principals or Pro-Proctors. 

Pleasant is the spot, well approved by past generations of 
Freshmen, picturesque and charming to an eye content with rich 
fields, luxuriant meadows, and pretty streams, tributaries of the 
now adolescent Thames, whose waters had not at that date been 
polluted by barge or lighter at that point of its course. The 
neighbourhood is famous for its plump larks ; and whether in a 
savoury pudding, swimming with beef-steak gravy, or roasted, a 
round half-dozen together, on an iron skewer or a tiny spit, those 
little warblers furnished forth a pretty adjunct on a well-spread 
table, tempting to an appetite somewhat appeased by heavier and 
more substantial \aands. Mine host at our road-side quarters had 
a cook who dressed them to a nicety ; contriving to produce or 
develope a succulency and flavour which meaner practitioners 
would scarcely have deemed practicable. Now Martin, pursuant 
to his master's instructions for securing a repast of ducks and the 
dainty lark, finding the landlord brought ont from his shady 
porch by the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the well-beaten road, 
announced the approaching arrival, and ordered dinner. "My 
master wishes to find a couple of larks, and a dozen of ducks, 
w^ell roasted, on his arrival at four o'clock." " Did I understand 
you rightly, young man ?" said Boniface. " !" said the varlet, 
pettishly, " in Oxford no landlord needs twice telling ;" — and 
betook himself to the stables, looking forward to the enjoyment 
of a tankard of good house-brewed ale, — no brewer's iniquitous 
mixture, — and the opportunity of shining with some lustre in the 
tap, or the kitchen, before country bumpkins, eager to listen to a 
man like himself, who had seen racing at ISTewmarket and Don- 
caster, and high life at Bath and Cheltenham. Meantime, his 
masters came leisurely along the road, nor thought of applying a 
•7* 



154: TABLE TEAITS. 

spur, until the craving bowels of tlie younger horseman, whose 
digestive organs were unimpaired by College theses and examina- 
tions, suggested a lack of provender ; and, their watches, when 
consulted, indicating the near approach of the dinner hour, they 
broke off their chat, and soon drew rein at their place of tempo- 
rary sojourn. 

Finding the cloth laid, and the busy waiter's preparations nearly 
complete, they glanced with satisfaction at a table of somewhat 
unnecessary dimensions, considering the limited extent of the 
party, v/hich our young Hellenist would have described as a 
"duality." Just as our travellers were growing impatient, the 
landlord, having previously satisfied himself, by obsequious inquiry, 
that his guests were quite ready, re-entered, bearing a dish with 
bright cover, and heading as good a procession of domestics, each 
similarly laden, as the limited resources of his modest establish- 
ment admitted. The large number of dishes rather surprised the 
elder of the twain, whose mind was less absorbed by the sugges- 
tions of appetite ; and, having dispatched the sole attendant left 
for a bottle of the best Madeira the cellar could supply, and a jug 
of that malt liquor for which the house had obtained some 
notoriety, he proceeded to look under the formidable range of 
covers. Seeing under the first a couple of ducks, he said, " Come, 
this is all right !" but finding the next, and the nest,, and still the 
next, but a repetition of the same, either with or without the 
odour of seasoning, he fairly stood aghast, when six couple of 
goodly ducks stood revealed before him. The young collegian's 
mirth was great, his laugh hearty, at the climax of two pretty 
little chubby larks which closed the line of dishes. Apple sauce 
and gravy, broccoli and potatoes, stood sentries, flanking the 
array. Upon his ringing the bell with no gentle hand, the land- 
lord himself stepped in from the passage, where he appeared to 
have awaited a summons; and, in answer to a question the 
reader may easily anticipate, replied that the servant's order was 
precise, and that it was impatiently repeated upon his own hesita- 
tion in accepting it. The respectability of the landlord, and the 



A LIGHT DINNER FOR TWO. 165 

evident triitlifulness of his manner, stayed all further questions. 
But the elder gentleman said firmly, that he should not pay for 
what had been so absurdly provided ; alleging, that no two, or 
even three, persons could be found who would do justice to such 
provisions. The landlord, like Othello, " upon that hint spake ;" 
for he saw a faint chance of righting a somewhat difficult matter. 
" O, Sir," said he, " I think I could find a man hard by, who 
would not consider the supplies too much for his own appetite." 
" Produce him," said the guest, " and settle the point ; for, if you 
do, I will pay for the whole." The anxious landlord said no more ; 
but, bowing, left in search of a neighbouring cobbler, whose 
prowess with the knife and fork Avas pre-eminent in the vicinit}^ 
Meantime, our hungry travellers sat down to dinner with such 
good will, that each of them disposed of one of the regiment ; 
and in a joint attack, a third fell mutilated, leaving but fragmen- 
tary relics. A lark a-piece was a mere practical joke; and 
cheese, with celery, left nothing farther wanting to appease those 
cravings which had prompted them to action. While these little 
matters were in progress, the landlord had found the shoemaker, 
and told his story. "Well," said Lapstone, "this is plaguy 
unlucky, for I've just had a gallon of broth ! Such a famous 
chance, too ; for if there is any thing I am particularly fond of, 
certainly ducks is a weak point, Sir !" Boniface, thinking it his 
only chance, urged him to try ; and the man of bristles, nothing- 
loth, consented. On being duly introduced, orders were given for 
setting-to on the spot, to insure fair play, and defeat sjij supple- 
mentary aid, or a deposit in any other pocket, save that with 
which the savage . in a nude state finds himself provided, — the 
stomach. While the travellers sipped their wine, and trifled with 
their dessert, the voracious cobbler fell heartily to work on the 
row of eight ducks before him : one having been sent dovm for 
the undeserving groom, whose blunder had proved a godsend to 
the man of leather. Wisely eschewing vegetables, and eating 
scantily of bread, the disjecta membrei of the doomed ducks 
rapidly yielded up their savoury integuments. But flesh is weak. 



156 TABLE TRAITS. 

and cobblers' appetites are not wholly unappeasable; so that 
wbile tbe fifth victim was under discussion, a stimulant, in the 
shape of " a little brandy," was requested ; and when the sixth' 
was but slowly and more slowly disappearing, poor Lapstone, who 
began to think farther progress impossible, v/as seen whispering to 
the landlord. The gentleman loudly demanded what the fellow 
was saying. " Sir," said the landlord, promptly and cunningl}^, 
" he says, he wishes there were half-a-dozen more ; for he is just 
beginning to enjoy them." "Confound the rascal's gluttony," 
cried the travellers; "not a bit more shall he have. Put the 
remaining couple by for our supper ; for we shall not leave your 
house till to-morrow :" — an arrangement affording much relief to 
the shoemaker, and entire satisfaction to the innkeeper. 

To return to the lark It is worthy of notice, that London is 
annually supplied, from the country about Dunstable alone, with 
not less than four thousand dozen of these succulent songsters. 
At Leipsic, the excise on larks, for that single city, amounts to 
nearly £1,000 sterling yearly. The larks of Dunstable and Leip- 
sic are, I presume, " caught napping." They are not, then, like 
the nightingale, who is said to sing all night, to keep herself 
awake, lest the slow-worm should devour her. 

And this reminds me of a remark which I once heard made by 
one who disputed the fact, that every thing had its use. Mr. Jer- 
dan could not conjecture what use there could be in the 
cimex, that domestic "B flat," which may be found in old 
beds and old parchments. So my friend could not divine the 
utility of a slow-worm, or of that unclean parasite, the " louse," 
which, by the way, infects birds as well as dirty humanity, and 
even reaches these same aspiring larks. For the use of the slow- 
worm I referred him to natural history ; for that of the pediculus, 
I could only state that it is swallowed by some country-people as 
a cure for jaundice! At Hardenberg, in Sweden, it held a posi- 
tion of some importance. When a Burgomaster had to be chosen, 
the eligible candidates sat with their beards upon the table, in the 



THE MATERIALS FOE DINING. 157 

centre of which was placed a louse ; and the one in whose beard 
he took cover was the Magistrate for the ensuing year. After 
the ceremony, the company supped upon ducks, and sang like 
larks. 

The household of Job was of a hospitable cast. " His sons 
went and feasted in their houses, every one on his day ; (which is 
explained as being the birth-daj]) "and sent and called for their 
three sisters to eat and drink with them." We know what mate- 
rials the joyous family had to make a superb feast ; and doubtless 
he who presided thereat was as proud as the Knight who, by 
virtue of triumphing in the tournament, alone had the right to 
carve the peacock which was placed before him — plumage, tail, 
and all — by the fairest " she " to be found in the vicinity. After 
all, the peacock w^as inferior to the succulent and sweet-throated 
thrush. The proper time for eating thrushes, and indeed, much 
other of the small game of the bird species, is towards the end of 
ISTovember. The reason assigned by a French epicure is, that, 
after they have been fattened in the fields and vineyards, they 
then give a biting, bitter aroma to their flesh by feeding on juniper 
berries. The Romans fed them on a paste made up of figs, wheat, 
and aromatic grains. The Roman epicures were as fond of them 
as the Marquis de Cussy was of red partridges, one of which he 
ate on the day of his death, and after a six months' illness. It 
was his last act; and, in gastronomic annals, it is recorded, as 
Nelson's calling for sealing-wax amid the thunders of Copenhagen, 
or his writing to Horatio before he went to meet death at Trafal- 
gar, is noticed by the biographers of our naval heroes. Statistics, 
which are as pleasantly void of truth as poetry, generally speak- 
ing, set down the enormous total of nearly fifty-two millions of 
francs as the sum expended yearly in France for fowls of all 
species. Taking the amount of population into consideration, 
this would prove that France is a more fowl-consuming nation 
than any other on the face of the globe. 

In a dietetic point of view, it would be well for weak stomachs 
to remember, that wild birds are more nutritious than their 



158 TABLE TRAITS. 

domesticated cousins, and more digestible. But the white -breast 
or wing of a chicken is less heating than the flesh of winged 
game. Other game — such as venison, which is dark-coloured, 
and contains a large proportion of fibrine — produces highly- 
stimulating chyle ; and, consequently, the digestion is an easy and 
rapid affair for the stomach. But, though the whiter meats be 
detained longer in the stomach, furnish less stimulating chyle, and 
be suffered to run into acetous fermentation, their lesser stimulating 
quality may recommend them when the general system is not in 
want of a spur. Meats are wholesome, or otherwise, less with 
reference to themselves than to the consumer. " To assert a thing 
to be wholesome," says Van Swieten, "without a knowledge of 
the condition of the person for whom it is intended, is like a 
sailor pronouncing the wind to be fair, without knowing to what 
port the vessel is bound." 

Cardinal Fesch would have made an exception in the case of 
"blackbirds." His dinners at Lyons were reverenced for the 
excellence and variety of these dishes. The birds were sent to 
him weekly from Corsica ; and they were said to incense half the 
archiepiscopal city. They were served with great form ; and none 
who ate thereof ever forgot the flavour which melted along his 
palate. The Cardinal used to say that it was like swallowing 
paradise, and that the smell alone of his blackbirds was enough 
to revivify half the defunct in his diocese. 

Quite as rich a dish may be found in the pheasant which has 
been suspended by the tail, and which detaches himself from his 
caudine appendage, by way of intimation that he is ready. It is 
thus, we are told, that a pheasant hung up on Shrove Tuesday is 
susceptible of being spitted on Easter-day ! It is popularly said 
in France of the pheasant, that it only lacks something to be 
equal to the turkey ? A wise saying, indeed ! but, the truth is, 
the two cannot be compared. Our own popular adage regarding 
the partridge and woodcock has far better grounds for what they 
assert : — 



THE MATERIALS FOE DINING. 159 

"If the partridge had but the woodcock's thigh, 
'T would be the best bird that ever did fly. 
If the woodcock had but the partridge's breast, 
'T would be the best bird that ever was dress'd." 

The partridge is much on the ground, the woodcock ever on the 
wing; and these parts, and the immediate vicinity of them, 
acquire a muscular toughness, not admired by epicures. 

The vegetarians may boast of a descent as ancient as that 
claimed by the Freemasons. In ancient days, if, indeed, flesh 
meat was not denounced, unmeasured honor was paid to vegeta- 
bles. Monarchs exchanged them as gifts, wise men and warriors 
supped on them after study and battle, Chiefs of the noblest des- 
cent prepared them with their own hands for their own tables, 
agricultural chymists tended their planting, and pious populations 
raised some of them to the rank of gods. 

The Licinian Law enacted their use, while it restricted the con- 
sumption of meat ; and the greatest families in Rome derived 
their names from them. Fabius was but General Bean^ Cicero 
was Vice-Chancellor Pea, and the house of Lentilus took its 
appellation from the slow-growing Lentil. 

The kitchen-garden of Henry VIII. was worse supplied than 
that of Charlemagne, who not only raised vegetables, but, as Gus- 
tavus Vasa's Queen did with her eggs and milk, made money by 
them. He was a royal market-gardener, and found more profit 
in his salads than he did in his sons. A salad, by the way, was 
so scarce an article during the early part of last century, that 
George I. was obliged to send to Holland to procure a lettuce for 
his Queen ; and now lettuces are flung by cart-loads to the pigs. 
Asparagus and artichokes were strangers to us until a still later 
period. 

The bean has, from remote times, held a distinguished place. 
Isidorus asserts that it was the first food used by man. Pythagoras 
held that human life was in it. By others the black spot was 
accounted typical of death ; and the Flamen of Jupiter would 
neither look upon it nor pronounce its name. The Priests of 



160 TABLE TEAITS. 

Apollo, on tlie other hand, banqueted on a dish of beans at one of 
the festivals of their god. Those of ^sculapius taught that the 
smell of beans in blossom was prejudicial to health ; and farmer's 
wives, in the days of Baucis and Philemon, maintained that hens 
reared on beans would never lay eggs. 

The " bean " was once the principal feature in the Twelfth-Kight 
cake ; and he to whose share fell the piece containing the vege- 
table was King for the night. The last Twelfth Night observed, 
with ancient strictness, at the Tuileries, was when Louis XVIII. 
was yet reigning. Among his guests was Louis Philippe, Duke of 
Orleans, who was lucky enough to draw the bean, and thereby 
became Monarch for the nonce. " My cousin," said Louis XIIL, 
" is King at last !" " I will never accept such title," answered the 
over-modest Duke; " I acknowledge no other King in France but 
your Majesty, and will not usurp the name even in jest !" Excellent 
man ! he was at that very moment intriguing to tumble from his 
throne that very King, loyalty for whom he expressed with so much 
of unnecessary and enforced ceremony. 

The haricot blanc, or white kidney bean, deserves to be intro- 
duced more generally into our kitchens. There are various methods 
of dressing them ; but the best is to have them softened in the 
gravy of a leg of mutton ; they are then a good substitute for 
potatoes. They are nearly as good, dressed with oil or butter ; 
and IS'apoleon was exceedingly fond of them, dressed as a salad. 
Of course, we allude here to the bean which, in full maturity, is 
taken from the pod, and eaten in winter. In England we eat the 
pod itself, (in summer,) split, and served with roast mutton and 
venison. The mature bean, however, makes an excellent dish. 

And a-propos to Monarchs, it is to Alexander that we are 
indebted for the Indian " haricot ;" and the vegetable had a fashion 
in Greece and Rome worthy of its distinguished introducer. But 
this fashion was not a mere consequence; for grey peas were 
as universally eaten. The people were so fond of these, that polit- 
ical aspirants bought votes of electors in exchange for them. They 
formed the principal refreshment of the lower citizens at the circus 



THE MATERIALS FOK DmiNG!-. 161 

and tlie theatre, where, instead of the modern cry of " Oranges, 
biscuits, porter, and bill of the play !" was to be heard that of 
" Peas ! peas ! ram peas ! grey peas ! and a programme of the 
beasts and actors !" 

Green peas were not known in France until the middle of the 
sixteenth century. They were grown, but people no more thought 
of eating them than we do the sweet pea. The gardner Michaux 
was born, and he it was who first sent green peas to a Christian table. 

When Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, wished to keep all the beans 
that grew in the Thesprotian Marsh for his own eating, the gods 
dried up the marsh, and beans could never be made to grow there 
again. So, when King Antigonus put a tax on the healing spring 
that flowed at Edessa, the waters disappeared ; and the people 
were not, in either case, benefited. What lumbering avengers 
were those heathen deities ! 

The cabbage has had a singular destiny, — in one country an 
object of worship ; in another, of contempt. The Egyptians made 
of it a god ; and it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. 
The Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the languor fol- 
lowing inebriation. Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea 
for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in 
paralysis ; Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled 
with salt, for the colic ; and Athenian medical men prescribed it to 
young nursing-mothers, who wished to see lusty babies lying in 
their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as 
food and as medicine, — in the latter case, as a vermifuge. The 
same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but as a good 
edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore-throat at 
the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, 
has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original " grass" 
was from twelve to twenty feet high ; and a dish of them could 
only have been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, 
stems of asparagus were raised of three pounds' weight, — heavy 
enough to knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate 
them of more moderate dimensions, or would have eat them, but 



162 TABLE TEAITS. 

that tlie piiblisMiig doctors of their day denounced asparagus as 
injurious to the sight. But then it was also said, that a slice or 
two of boiled pumpkin would re-invigorate the sight which had 
been deteriorated by asparagus. "Do that as quickly as you 
should asparagus !" is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, 
and illustrative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared 
for the table. 

The gourd does not figure at our repasts as commonly as it did 
in the east of Europe in mythological times, when it was greedily 
eaten, boiled hot, or preserved in pickle. The readers of Athenseus 
will remember, how a party of philosophers lost their temper, in a 
discussion as to whether the gourd vras round, square, or oblong, — 
how a coarse-minded doctor interrupted the discussion by a very 
incongruous remark, — and how the venerable sage who was in the 
chair called the rude man to order, and then bade the disputants 
proceed with their argument. 

A still more favourite dish, at Athens, was turnips, from Thebes. 
Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman 
tables. Purslain was rather honoured as a cure against poisons, 
whether in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. 
I have heard it asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a glass 
with fingers which have been previously rubbed with purslain, or 
parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the experi- 
ment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm. 

Broccoli was the favourite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate 
greedily thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as 
he, the master of the Roman v/orld and his illustrious heir were 
constantly quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli 
stood between them. Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic 
favour ; the dictum of Galen was against them ; and, for a long 
time, they were only used by drinkers, against head-ache, and by 
singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced artichokes 
excellent food for poor people and donkeys ! For nobler stomachs 
he preferred the cucumber, — the Femesis of vegetables. But 
people were at issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so, 



THE MATERIALS FOR DIXra-Q. 163 

regarding the lettuce, wliicli has been universally honoured. It 
was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful Adonis. It 
was prescribed as provocative to sleep ; and it cured Augustus of 
the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of Bel- 
gium, — hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, 
and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, 
vrho not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irri- 
gated them with wine, in order to increase their flavour. 

But we must not place too much trust in the stories either of 
sages or apothecaries. These Pagans recommended the seductive, 
but indigestible, endive, as good against the headache, and young 
onions and honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken 
fasting ; but this was a prescription for rustic swains and nymphs, 
— the higher classes, in town or country, would hardly venture on 
it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them 
of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek 
accounted, not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The love 
for melons was derived, in similar fashion, probably, from Tiberius, 
who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The 
German Caesars inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, 
carrying it, indeed, to excess ; for more than one of them, as may 
be seen in another page, submitted to die after eating melons, 
rather than live by renouncing them. 

I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes 
that could vie v/ith them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could 
burrow in the hollow of one, and that it was not uncommon to 
grow them of a hundred pounds in weight. It must have been 
such radishes as these that were employed by seditious mobs of 
old, as weapons, in insurrections. In such case, a rebellious peo- 
ple were always well victualled, and had peculiar facilities, not 
only to beat their adversaries, but to eat their own arms. The 
• horse-radish is, probably, a descendant of this gigantic 
ancestor. It had, at one period, a gigantic reputation. 
Dipped in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and, rubbed 
on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere 



164: TABLE TRAITS. 

play. In sliort, it was celebrated as being a cure for every evil in 
life, — tbe only exception being, tliat it destroyed the teeth. There 
was far more difference of opinion touching garlic, than there 
was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the 
leek and the cabbage ; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, — and to 
soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were not " game." Medicinally, it 
was held to be useful in many diseases, if the root used were 
originally sown when the moon was below the horizon. No one 
who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the Temple 
of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess ; 
and a Knight of Castile, " detected as being guilty of garlic," 
suffered banishment from the royal presence during an entire 
month. 

Parsley has fared better, both with gods and men. Hercules 
and Anacreon crowned themselves with it. It was worn both 
at joyous banquets and funeral feasts ; and not only horses, but 
those who bestrode them, ate of the herb, in order to find the 
excitement to daring which otherwise lacked. In contrast with 
parsley stood the water-cress, a plant honoured and eaten only by 
the Persians. It was, indeed, medically esteemed as curative of 
consumption, and, by placing it in the ears, of tooth-ache. But 
th e wits and Plutarch denounced its use in any case ; and few 
cared to affect love for a plant which was popularly declared to 
have the power of twisting the noses of those who put it into 
their mouths ! 

Parsley was as popular in what may be called "classical" 
times, as the asparagus has invariably been with a particular class 
in France. This vegetable has ever been, I know not wherefore, 
a favourite vegetable with the officials of the Galilean Church. 
One day^ Monseigneur Courtois de Quincy, Bishop of Belley, was 
informed that an asparagus head had jiist pierced the soil in His 
Eminence's kitchen-garden, and .that it was worth looking at. 
Cardinal and convives rose from table, visited the spot, and were 
lost in admiration at what they saw. Day by day the Bishop 
watched the growth of the delicious giant. His mouth watered 



THE MATERIALS FOK DINING. 165 

as he looked at it, and happy was lie when the day arrived in 
which he might with his own hands take it from the ground. 
When he did so, he found, to his disappointment, that he held a 
wooden counterfeit, admirably turned and painted by the Canon 
Rosset, who was famous for his artistic abilities, and also for his 
practical jokes. The joke on this occasion was taken in good 
part, and the counterfeit asparagus was admitted to the honour of 
lying on th^ Bishop's table. 

I have noticed, that asparagus has been suggested as one of the 
substitutes for coffee. In this case, the seeds are taken from the 
berries, by drying the latter in an oven, and rubbing them on a 
sieve. When ground, the seeds make a full-flavoured coffee, not 
inferior, it is said, — but that is doubtful, — to the best Mocha. 

It was the opinion of Pliny, that nature intended asparagus to 
grow wild, in order that all might eat thereof. That was 
esteemed the best which grew naturally on the mountain-sides. 
The famous Ravenna asparagus was cultivated with such perfec- 
tion, that three of them weighed a pound. Lobster surrounded 
with asparagus was a favourite dish ; and the rapidity with which 
the latter should be cooked, is illustrated, as I have said, by a 
proverb : " Velocius quam asparagi coquuntur P There is a story 
told of an intrusive traveller forcing his company at supper on 
another wayfarer, before whom were placed an omelette and some 
asparagus. The intruder had not before seen any "grass," and 
inquired what it was. " 0, it is very well in its way," said the 
other, " and we will divide both omelette and asparagus ;" and there- 
with, after carving the first, he cut the bunch in two, and gave 
the white ends to the importunate visitor. The greatest indigna- 
tion ever experienced by Careme, was once at hearing that some 
guests had eaten asparagus with one of his new entremets^ and 
mixed it in their mouths with iced champagne. 

There is an opinion current in some parts of England, that 
they who eat of old parsnips that have been long in the ground 
invariably go mad ; and on this account the root is called " mad- 
nip." On some such " insane root," it is said, the Indians, named 



166 TABLE TEAITS. 

by Garcilasso, whetted their appetites before tliey ate their dead 
parents. Such form of entombment was accounted most digni- 
fied and dutiful. If the defunct w^as lean, the children boiled 
their parent; but obesity was always honoured by roasting. 
Fathers and mothers were religiously picked to the very bones, 
and the bones themselves were then consigned to the earth. 
This, however, is not an exclusively Indian custom. The Indians 
only devoured their deceased parents ; but I have seen, in Chris- 
tian England, many a son devouring father and mother, too, 
during their lives, swallowing their very substance, and then^ 
like the Indians, committing their bones to the bosom of a tender 
mother, — earth. 

Perhaps there is nothing, in the vegetable way, more insipid 
than parsnips ; but these are sometimes as mischievous as insipid 
persons. This is the case, if the above-named tradition be worthy 
of credit, wherein we are told, that old parsnips are called " mad- 
nips," and that the maids who eat of them invariably become 
more like Salmacis than the youth she wooed, and are as much 
given to dancing as though they had been bitten by a tarantula. 
I fear the " mad-nip " is too much eaten in many of our rural 
districts, and perhaps by the acerha virgo of metropolitan towns 
and episcopal cities also. But let us look at our ancient friend, 
the potato. 

It has been well said, that the first art in boiling a potato, is 
to prevent the boiling of the potato. " Upon the heat and flame 
of the distemper sprinkle cool patience ;" for without patience, 
care, and attention, — extreme vigilance being implied by the 
latter, a potato will never come out of the pot triumphantly well 
boiled. 

The potato has been found in an indigenous state in Chili, on 
the mountains near Valparaiso and Mendoza; also near Monte 
Video, Lima, Quito, in Santa Fe da Bogota, and on the banks of 
the Orizaba, in Mexico. Cobbett cursed the root as being that 
of the ruin of Ireland, where it is said to have been first planted 
by Raleigh, on his estate at Youghal, near Cork. Its introduction 



THE MATERIALS FOS DINING. 167 

into England is described as the effect of accident, in consequence 
of the wrecking of a vessel on the coast of Lancashire, v>'hich had 
a quantity of this " fruit " on board. 

The common potato {solanum tuberosum) was probably first 
brought to Spain from Quito by the Spaniards, in the early part 
of the sixteenth century. In both of those countries the tubers 
are known by the designation of papas. In passing from Spain 
into Italy, it naturalized itself under the name of " the truffle." 
In 1598, we hear of its arrival at Vienna, and thence spreading 
over Europe. It certainly was not known in N^orth America in 
158-6, the period at which Raleigh's colonists in Virginia are said 
to have sent it to England ; and in the latter country it w^as not 
known until long after its introduction, as noticed above, into 
Ireland. In Gerard's Herbal (1597) the Batata Virginiana^ as it 
is called, to distinguish it from the Batata Udulis, or " sweet 
potato," 'is described; and the author recommends the root, not 
for common food, but as " a delicate dish." The sweet potato v/as 
the " delicate dish " at English tables long before the introduction 
of its honest cousin. We imported it from Spain and the Cana- 
ries, and in very considerable quantities. It enjoyed the reputation 
of possessing power to restore decayed vigour. This reputation 
has not escaped Shakespeare, who makes Falstaff exultingly remark, 
in a fit of pleasant excitement, that " it rains potatoes !" The 
Royal Society of England, in 1663, urgently recommended the 
extensive cultivation of the root as a resource against threatened 
famine ; but as late as the end of that century, a good hundred 
years after its first introduction, the writers on gardening con- 
tinued to treat its merits with a contemptuous indifference ; though 
one of them does " damn with faint praise," by remarking, that 
" they are much used in Ireland and America as bread, and may 
be propagated with advantage to poor people." As late as 1*719, 
the potato was not deemed worthy of being named in the " Com- 
plete Gardener " of Loudon and Wise, and it was not till the 
middle of the last century that it became generally used in Bri- 
tain and North America. The " conservatives of gulosity " of 
that day continued long to disparagingly describe it as " a root 



168 TABLE TBAITS. 

found in the New World, consisting of little knobs, held together 
by strings : if you boil it well, it can be eaten ; it may become an 
article of food; it will certainly do for hogs; and though it is 
rather flatulent and acid in the human stomach, perhaps, if you 
boil it with dates, it may serve to keep soul and body together, 
among those who can find nothing better." 

Some sixty years since, the Dutch introduced the potato into 
Bengal. The produce was sold in Calcutta at 6s. a pound. The 
English tried to raise them, and all their plants grew like Jack's 
bean-stalk, but lacked its strength. The Hollanders continually 
cut the swiftly-growing plant, and so compelled it to produce its 
fruit beneath the ground. The secret was as well worth knowing 
as that other touching j)otatoes during frost. The only precaution 
necessary is, to retain the potato in a perfectly dark place, for 
some days after the thaw has commenced. In America, where 
they are sometimes frozen as hard as stones, they rot if thawed 
in open day ; but if thawed in darkness, they do not rot, and lose 
very little of their natural odour and properties. So, at least, they 
assert, who profess to have means of best knowing. The potato 
is said to have been first planted, in England, in the county of 
Lancashire, which was once as famous for the plant as Lithuania 
is for beet-root. It is not much more than a century since cab- 
bages reached us from Holland. They were first planted in Dor- 
setshire, by the Ashleys ; and I may add here what I have omitted 
in speaking of it in earlier times, namely, that the Athenians 
administered the juice of it in cases of slow parturition. Let me 
further add, that such terms as " cow-cabbage," " horse-radish," 
" bull-rush," and the like, do not imply any connexion between the 
article and the animal. The animal prefix is simply to signify 
unusual size. The prefix was commonly so applied by the ancients : 
hence the name of Alexander's charger ; and a not less familiar 
illustration is afforded us in the case of the " horse-leech." Cab- 
bage used to have said of it what Lemery, physician of Louis 
XIV., more truly said of spinach ; namely, that " it stops cough- 
ing, allays the sharp humours of the breast, and keeps the body 
open." Spinach, to be truly enjoyed, should never be eaten with- 



THE MATERIALS FOK DmtNG. 169 

out liberal saturation of gravy; and French epicures say, "Do not 
forget the nutmeg." This vegetable goes excellently with swine's 
flesh in every shape, but especially ham, the stimulating flavour of 
which it strongly modifies. 

Rice, as an article of food, has something remarkable in it. Its 
cultivation destroys life ; and when the grain is eaten, its value as 
a supporter of strength is very uncertain. The cultivation of this 
production, where it does not destroy life, does destroy comfort, 
and slaves may be compelled, but freemen will not go voluntarily, 
to raise the " paddy crop." In India, where the people of many 
districts depend upon it entirely as a chief article of food, famine 
is often the result, simply because the failure of one crop leaves 
the unenergetic people without any other present resource. 

And now, by way of a concluding word to those who read 
medicinally, I would say, on the best authority, first, that of the 
haricot-bean I have nothing to add to what I have already stated. 
"With regard to peas, they are, like many other things, most plea- 
sant and wholesome when young. Old, they are the fathers of 
gaseous colic ; and, when swallowed with the additional tenacity 
of texture derived from being made into pudding, — why, then the 
unhappy consum^er is a man to be pitied. Potatoes are best baked, 
or roasted lightly. In the latter case, they are scarcely less nutri- 
tious than bread ; but the potato must be in fiiU health, and the 
cooking unexceptionable. There is many a cook who would 
execute, to a charm, the fricandeau invented by Leo X., v>^ho has 
not the remotest idea of cooking a potato. When the Flemings 
sent us the carrot, in the reign of Elizabeth, it is a pity they could 
not have deprived it of its fibrine texture, the drawback to be set 
against its saccharine nutritiveness. As the Romans waxed strong 
upon the turnip, we may allow that it has some virtues, and that 
Charles the First's Secretary, Lord Townshend, did good service 
by re-introducing it to his countrymen. Like the Jerusalem arti- 
choke it requires a strong accompaniment of salt and pepper, to 
counteract its watery and flatulent influences. As for radishes, he 
who eats them is tormenting his stomach with bad water, woody 
8 



170 TABLE TSAITS. 

fibre, and acrid poison ; and if his stomacli resents such treatment, 
why, it most emphatically " serves him right." As for cucumber, 
in the days of Evelyn, it was looked upon as only one remove from 
poison, and it had better be eaten and enjoyed with that opinion 
in memory. It was a pity that what is pleasant is not always 
what is proper. Thus the cucumber is attractive, but not nutri- 
tive ; while the onions at whose very name every man stands with 
his hand to his mouth, like a Persian in the act of ad-oration^ is 
exceedingly nourishing and wholesome. But I can never think 
of it, without remembering the story of the man who, having 
breakfasted early on bread and onions, entered an inn on a bit7 
terly cold morning, with the remark, that for the last two hours 
he had had the wind in his teeth. " Had you ?" said the unfor- 
tunate person who happened to be nearest to him : " then, by 
Jove, the wind had the worst of it 1" 

An onion is all very well as an ingredient in a sauce, but to 
make a meal of it ! Well ! it is on record that a dinner has been 
made, at which nothing was served but sauces. A dinner of sau- 
ces must have been quickly prepared ; but, for quick preparation, 
I know nothing that can vie with a feat accomplished, on the 18th 
of March of the present year, at the Freemasons' Tavern. The 
" Round-Catch-and Canon Club " were to dine there at half-past 
five p. M. An hour previously, the active Secretary, Mr. Francis, 
Vicar-Choral of St. Paul's, arrived, to see that " all was right." 
He found all wrong. Through some mistake, no company was 
expected ; and, there being no other dinners ordered for that day, 
the weary proprietors, and their chief "aids," were enjoying a 
little relaxation. ISTot only were the high priestesses of the kitchen 
" out," but the sacred fires of the altars had followed their exam- 
ple. Great was the horror of the able counter-tenor Secretary ; 
but the difficulty was triumphantly met by the accomplished ofii- 
cers of the establishment ; and, at six o'clock precisely, forty-two 
of us sat down to so perfect a banquet, that the shade of Careme 
might have contemplated it with a smile of unalloyed satisfaction. 
This house may boast of this tour de force, for ever ! 



lYl 



SAUCES. 

The donor of the sauce dinner, mentioned in tlie last page, was 
an eccentric old Major. He invited three persons to partake of 
this unique repast. The soup consisted of gravy sauce, and 
oyster and lobster sauce were handed round instead of filet de 
sole. Then came the sirloin in guise of Qgg sauce, on the ground, 
I suppose, that an ^gg is proverbially " full of meat." There was 
no pheasant, but there was bread sauce, to put his guests in mind 
of the flavour ; and if they had not plum-pudding, they had as 
much towards it as could be implied by brandy sauce ; just as 
Heyne says, that Munich is the modern Athens in this far, — that 
if it has not the philosophers, it has the hemlock, and has Alcibia- 
des' dog, as a preparation towards getting Alcibiades. The sauce- 
boats were emptied by the guests. The wine was well resorted to 
after each boat, and a little brandy settled the viand that was 
represented by the Qgg sauce. Half the guests, between excess 
of lobster sauce and Cognac, were all the worse for the banquet ; 
but that proved rather the weakness of their stomachs than the 
non-excellence of the feast. It is said that the Major, when alone 
in the evening, wound up with a rump-steak supper, — a process 
rather characteristic of the " old soldier ;" but I have heard in a 
provincial town, of large parties to " tea," followed by a snug fam- 
ily party, when the guests were all departed, to a hot supper, with 
the usual et cceteras. But let us get back from the supper to the 
matter of seasonings. 

Seasonings may be said to form an important item in the prac- 
tice and results of cookery. The first, and most useful and natu- 
ral, is salt. The ancients did not allow, at one time, of its use in 
sacrifices ; but Homer called it " divine," and Plutarch speaks of 
it as acceptable to the gods. Its value was not known to men 
until the Phoenicians, Selech and Misor, — so, at least, says an 
ancient legend, — taught mankind the real worth of this production 



1T2 TABLE TEAITS. 

as a condiment, and thereby gave to meat increased flavour, and to 
the eaters of it increased health and improved digestions. 

The Roman soldiers received their pay in solarium^ or " salt- 
money." The Mexican rulers punished rebellious provinces by 
interdicting the use of salt ; and Holland, some years since, cru- 
elly took vengeance on the breakers of the law, by serving them 
with food, without salt, during the term of their imprisonment. The 
poor wretches were almost devoured by worms, in consequence of 
this inhuman proceeding. 

Of course, the salt-money of the soldiery was, like the pin- 
money of a married lady, employed in other ways than those war- 
ranted by its appellation. For above three centuries, soldiers 
served gratis^ and supported themselves. Then came " salt- 
money," or solarium^ in the shape of a couple of oholi daily to the 
foot, and a drachma to the cavalry. This was to the common 
men. The Tribunes were, however, exorbitantly paid, if Juvenal's 
allusion may be trusted, wherein he says that, — 

*' alter enini, quantum in legione Tribuni 

Accipiunt, donat Calvincs vel Catience ;'' 

or, as it may be translated, 

" Such sums as a full Colonel's coflfers swell, 
He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell !" 

But this must have been in very late times, previous to which 
frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever the Tribune's 
share of the national virtues and their consequences, lauded by 
Livy. The first Caesar doubled the salarium of the army, and 
decreed that it should never be reduced. His successors followed 
the example of increase. Augustus fixed the salt-money at ten 
asses a day, and by the time of Domitian it was considerably more 
than double that amount. From that period, the soldiery fed bet- 
ter, and fought worse, than ever. Up to the time of the Empire 
they had been frugal livers, and were not above preparing the 
rations of corn allowed them with their own hands : some ground 



SAUCES. 1T3 

it in hand-mills, others pounded it between stones, and tlie 
hastily-baked cakes were eaten contentedly upon the turf, with 
nothing better to wash them down than pure water, or, at best, 
posca^ which was water mixed with vinegar, — and a very wholesome 
beverage, too, in hot weather. 

The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early Olympian the- 
ology, enforced the use of salt in all sacrificial ceremonies. That 
of the Dead Sea was abundant ; and Galen pronounced it as the 
most favorable for seasoning, and for promoting digestion. The 
Greeks learned to call it " divine," and at last consecrated it to 
their gods. Spilling salt was accounted as unlucky in the days 
when " young Time counted his birthdays by the sun," as in these 
modern times when the schoolmaster is abroad, — sometimes too 
much abroad. 

Ancus Martins was the first of the Roman Kings who levied a 
duty on salt. He was not visited by the gods — as legends say 
other Kings were who created such imposts — by some dire calam- 
ity. The bad example of Ancus Martins has continued over nearly 
the whole of Europe ; and a slave cannot eat salt to his bread 
without paying tribute to the King. 

The word " salt " was often used for life itself. When Dordalus 
says to Toxilus, in the " Perm," " Eodem mihi pretio sal prcehibe- 
tur quce tibi,''^ — " I get my salt at the same price as you do," — he 
simply means that his manner of life is as good as that of Toxilus, 
and that a slave-merchant is as respectable as the very best-fed of 
slaves themselves. Catullus employs the word to denote beauty ; 
other poets use it to signify vtrtues of various kinds; and in 
Terence we find a man without salt to mean a man without sense. 
Plutarch was not wrong when he styled salt " the condiment of 
condiments." I do not know that it has ever been used to point a 
proverb with a contemptuous meaning, except in Greece, where he 
who had nothing to dine upon was called a " salt-licker." Rome, 
where it was of such commercial importance, honoured it more by 
giving to the road along which it was conveyed the name of the 
" Salarian Way." 



1Y4: TABLE TRAITS. 

There were people wlio sever knew its use, as in Epeiros ; 
some wlio have steadily rejected it, as the Bathurst tribe in 
Austraha. The Peruvians delighted in it, and ate it mixed with 
hot pepper and bitter herbs, as a sort of "sweetmeat." How 
sacred it is in Arabia, we all know ; and, in illustration of it, I 
have heard of an Arab burglar accidentally letting his tongue 
come in contact, as he was plundering a house by night, with a 
piece of salt. He instantly deemed he had partaken of the 
owner's hospitality, and he departed without booty. Could 
Christian thieves be so influenced, we should salt our plate-baskets 
and cash-boxes nightly ! 

In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, and hardens 
in water. At Utica, one of the great salt suppliers of the ancient 
world, it lay about in such huge mounds, hardened by the sun 
and moon, that the pickaxe would scarcely penetrate it. In 
Arabia whole cities were once built of it, the blocks of salt being 
cemented by water. It is still procured with most difficulty in 
Abyssinia, where the clouds are supposed to deposit the crystal in 
sandy plains, of heat so furious, that it is only during one or two 
hours of the night that the seekers of it dare dash into the 
locality, and carry off, as hastily as possible, what they seek. It 
is procured far more pleasantly in those parts of Chili where it is 
found deposited on the leaves of plants. Off the warmer coasts 
of South America, and the still hotter shores of Africa, blocks 
weighing from one to tv^^o hundred weight have been picked up. 
Some writers tell us that lakes are nothing more than salt plains 
in solution ; and others, that salt plains are merely lakes con- 
gealed. However this may be, it is known that generally four 
gallons of water produce one of salt ; but there is great difference 
of result in various localities, some water yielding a sixth, other 
only a sixteenth. The deep sea-water is the most highly produc- 
tive. There are various strange ingredients, too, used in different 
places to make the salt " grain " properly. White of egg, butter, 
ale, and even blood, are employed to produce the desired result. 
In its fossil or mineral state it is nowhere seen to such great 



SAUCES. 1Y5 

advantage as in tlie mines of Williska, in Poland. I have seen 
those near Salzburg, in southern Austria; but these are mere 
salt-cellars, compared with the Polish mine, which forms a large 
subterranean city, has its streets, citizens, and coteries, and is an 
underground republic, many of the natives of which die without 
seeing a blade of grass, or a gleam of sunlight, upon the bosom 
of the upper earth. 

Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the digestive 
organs ; but it should be remembered that too much of it is 
almost as bad as too little. The lowering of the price of salt, a 
consequence of the abolition of the duty, was beneficial to the 
poor, and ruinous to the worm-doctors. It is a singular produc- 
tion. In small quantities it is a stimulating manure ; in large 
quantities it begets sterility. A little of it accelerates putrefac- 
tion, while a large quantity jprevents it. • Farther, it is to be 
remembered, — and I have mentioned the fact in another page, — 
that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever it may once have 
been) the table salt, the use of which is so favourable to digestion. 
In the meat it undergoes a chymical change, by which it deterio- 
rates itself as well as the object to which it is applied. '' Sweet 
salt " was the name once given to sugar ; and in reference to this 
latter, production, it may be safely averred, that its introduction 
worked a considerable change in society. And it appears to have 
been early added to that " significant luxury," wheat. In Isaiah 
xliii. 24 there is an allusion made to it in these words : " Thou 
hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou 
filled me with the fat of sacrifices." And again, in Jeremiah vi. 
20: "To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, 
and sweet cane from a far country?" It would seem, however, 
that though the sweet cane may have been known, its uses were 
not very speedily appreciated, or, if they were, that they were for 
a long time forgotten. Thus, as late as the thirteenth century of 
our era, a writer speaks of a novel sort of salt that has been 
discovered, the flavour of which was sweet, and, as he suggests, 
might be found acceptable to sick persons, because of its soothing 



176 TABLE TRAITS. 

and cooling properties. " Honey out of tlie rock," wMch. was the 
sweetener most early noticed in Scripture, fell into comparative 
disuse, after sugar had become a necessary of life, after being first 
a medicine, and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it from, 
the Arabs, and familiarized it in Europe. Its first settlement 
beyond the Continent was in Madeira, and at length it found a 
congenial soil in the islands of the "Western Indies. God gave 
the gift, but man has discovered how to abuse it to his own 
destruction ; and, from the sweet food off'ered by an angel, he has 
distilled the fire-water, which slays like the pestilence. But to 
return, for a moment, from the sweets to the salts, and especially 
to the latter in the form of brine. 

The Romans were fond of brine, — water in which bay-salt had 
been dissolved,— as a seasoning; and after dinner, those who 
could not guess the riddles that were put to them, were punished, 
like the refractory gentlemen at the JSTightingale Club, by being 
compelled to swallow a cu|)full, without drawing breath. Apicius 
invented a composition made up of salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, 
celery, rocket, and anise-seed, with lamoni, wild maijoram, holy 
thistle, spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as a specific to be taken, 
after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They who could digest 
the remedy need not have been afraid of the dinner. 

That universal seasoning of the classical world, the garum^ was 
originally a shrimp sauce ; but it was subsequently made of the 
intestines of almost any fish, macerated in water, saturated with 
salt; and when symptoms of putrefaction began to appear, a 
little parsley and vinegar were added ; and there was the famous 
garum, of which the inventors were so proud, — and particularly 
of a garum which was prepared in Spain. Flesh instead of fish 
was occasionally used, with no diff'erence in the process of prepa- 
ration ; and it would be difficult to say which was the nastier. 
But, perhaps, if we could see the witchery of preparing any of 
our own flavouring sauces, we should be reluctant ever to allow a 
drop of the polluted mixture to pass our lips. There is a bliss in 
ignorance. 



SAUCES. 1T7 

Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of seasonings, 
when he took to eating nothing but honey wherewith to flavour 
his bread. Hybla sounds sweet, the very word smells sweet, from 
its association with honey. Aristaeus, who is said to have 
discovered its use, merited the patent of nobility, whereby he was 
declared to have descended from the gods ; and the placing the 
honeycomb and its makers under the protection of Mellona, 
expressly made by men for this purpose, was a proof of the value 
in which they were held. Theophrastus placed sugar among the 
honeys, — the honey of reeds, — or the "salt of India," as some 
strangely called it. The Greek physicians recommended its use, 
both as food and flavourer. It was at one tiime as scarce as cina- 
mon,— that precious bark of which the phoenix made its nest, 
and which the Csesars monopolized. Cinnamon and cloves were 
not employed in seasoning until a comparatively mod^n period. 
The good people of earlier days preferred verjuice, in certain 
cases prescribed by Galen. They seemed to have a taste for 
acids: hence the admiration, both in Greece and Eome, for vine- 
gar and pickles. Vinegar figured in the army statistics of Rome 
especially ; but it once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable 
way in the statistics of the French army, in the time of Louis 
XIIL, when the Due de la Meilleraye, Grand Master of the 
Artillery of France, put down £52,000 as the sum expended by 
him in cooling cannons. How hot the war must have been, and 
at what a price the fever must have been maintained, when the 
merely refrigerating process cost so much ! 

French epicures maintain that the pig was born to be " ringed," 
and that his mission was to rout at the foot of the yoke-elm tree^. 
and turn up truffles ! Pliny gravely looked upon the truffle as c 
prodigy sown by the thunder-bolt in autumnal storms. Howev^tr 
this may be, all lovers of good things eat the truffle with a sort 
of devout ecstasy, in spite of the wide diflferences of opinion 
which exist among the faculty of guessers, as to whether the 
truffle be nutritious or poisonous, fit for food, or monster wire of 
indigestion. The fact is, that they should be delicately d'idlt with, 
8- 



178 TABLE TEAITS. 

like muslirooms ; of wLicli lie who eats not of them at all is safe 
from blaming them for bringing on indigestion — as far as he is 
concerned. 

The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, described by 
Archimagirus Soyer : " The truffle is a very remarkable vegetable, 
which, without stems, roots, or fibres, grows of itself, isolated in 
the bosom of the earth, absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form is 
round, more or less regular; its surface is smooth, or tuberculous ; 
the colour, dark brown outside, brown, grey, or white within. Its 
tissue is formed of articulated filaments, between which are spheric 
vesicles, and in the interior are placed reproductive bodies, small 
brown spheres, called ' truffinelles.^ Truffles vegetate to the depth 
of five or six inches in the high sandy soils of the south-west of 
France, Piedmont, &c. Their mode of vegetation and reproduc- 
tion is not» known. (?) Dogs are trained to find them, as well as 
pigs, and boars also, who are very fond of them. They are eaten 
cooked under the ashes, or in wine and water. They are 
preserved when prepared in oil, which is soon impregnated with 
their odour. Poultry is stuffed with them ; also geese's livers, 
pies, cooked pork, besides numerous ragouts. They possess, as it 
is said, exciting virtues." The latter, we suppose, is a paraphrase 
for the sentiment of " Falstaff"," before cited, " It rains potatoes !" 
Shell-fish had the same reputation in the olden time. " Tene mar- 
supiu7np says Italius to Olympic, in the Rudens '. — 

^^Abi atque obsonia propera ; sed lepide volo 
Molliculas escas, ut ipsa moUicula estP 

As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, it has been 
made the vehicle of death. Agrippina poisoned Claudius in one, 
and Kero, his successor, had a respect for this production ever after. 
Tiberius, in Pagan, and Clement VIL, in Papal, Eome, as well as 
Charles VI. of France, are also said to have been " approximately " 
killed by mushrooms. Seneca calls them " voluptuous poison," and 
of this poison his countrymen ate heartily, and suffered dreadfully. 



SAUCES. 179 

The musliroom was not rendered harmless by the process of 
Nicander, — raising them under the shadow of a well-irrigated 
and richly-manured fig-tree. 

One of the most perfect illustrations of " sauce," in its popular 
sense, with which I am acquainted, is conveyed in the reply once 
given by a French Cure, to his Bishop. It is a regulation made 
by canonical law, that a Priest cannot keep a female servant to 
manage his household, unless she be of the assigned age of, at 
least, forty years. It once happened that a Bishop dined with a 
(jure^ at whose house the Prelate had arrived in the course of a 
visitation tour. On that occasion he found that they were waited 
on at dinner by two quietly pretty female attendants, of some 
twenty years each. When diocesan and subordinate were once 
more alone, the former remarked on the uncanonical condition of 
the household, and asked the Cure if he were not aware that, by 
rule of church, he could maintain but one menagere^ who must 
have attained, at least, forty years of age ? " I am quite aware of 
it, Monseigneur,^'' said the rubicund Cu7-e ; " but, as you see, I pre- 
fer having my housekeeper in two volumes !" 

With respect to the use of spices, it may be safely said, that 
the less they are used, the better for the stomach. A sou2)fon of 
them in certain preparations is not to be objected to ; but it must 
be recollected that in most cases, however pleasant they must be 
to the palate, the apparent vigour which they give to the stomach 
is at the expense of the liver, and the reaction leaves the former 
in a worse condition than it was in before. 

The world probably never saw a second time such a trade in 
spices as that which was carried on of old between Canaan and 
Egypt. The Dutch and Amboyna was a huckstering matter com- 
pared with it. Egypt sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil and linen ; 
and Canaan sent, in return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious 
woods, and minerals. The Ishmaelites were the carrying mer- 
chants ; and, while each class of them had its especial article of 
commerce, they all dabbled a little in slave-dealing. Thus, the 
men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt in spicery only, — a 



180 TABLE TRAITS. 

term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian demand for the 
article was enormous. At the period of the sale of Joseph, 
spicery was most extensively used, not only for the embalming of 
men, but of sacred animals. In after times, this practice ceased 
to a great extent, on account of a large failure in the supply. 

There is something very characteristic of the " ancient nation " 
in the transaction of the brethren with respect to Joseph. The 
general proposal was to slay him ; but it was Judah, first of his 
race, who, with a strong eye to business, exclaimed, " What profit 
to slay our brother, and conceal his blood ? Come, let us sell him 
to the Ishmaelites." The opposition to fratricide, on the part of 
Judah, was not on the principle that it was a crime, but that it 
brought nothing. But no sooner had he pointed out how they 
might get rid of the troublesome brother, and put money in their 
purses to boot, than the profligate kinsmen adopted the project 
with alacrity, preferring lucrative felony to dovmright profitless 
murder. Do I hear you remark, Sir, that it has ever been thus 
with this rebellious Jewish people ? Well, let us not be rash in 
assertions. Judah was a very mercenary fellow, no doubt; 
but it was better to sell a live brother into a slavery which 
gave him the chance of sitting at the table of Pharaoh Phiops, 
than to murder one for the mere sake of making money by the 
sale of the body, as was done by a Christian gentleman of the 
name of Burke. 

There are some plants used in seasoning which have been 
esteemed for other virtues besides lending a fillip to the appetite. 
Others of these seasoning plants have acquired an evil reputation. 
Thus orach was said to cause pallor and dropsy. Eocket had a 
double use : it not only was said to remove freckles but an infu- 
sion of it in wine rendered the hide of a scourged convict insen- 
sible to the whip. Fennel was, unlike asparagus, held to be good 
for the sight. Dill, on the other hand, injured the eyes, while it 
strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in great favour with 
the medical philosophers, who prescribed it to be taken, fasting, 
in wine ; and hyssop wine was a specific for cutaneous eruptionsj 



SAUCES. 181 

brought on by drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild thyme 
cured the bite of serpents, — if the sufferer could only collect it in 
time ; and pennyroyal was sovereign for indigestion. Rue cured 
the ear-ache, and nullified poisons ; for which latter purpose, it was 
much used by Mithridates. Mint w^as gaily eaten, with many a joke, 
because it was said to have been originally a pretty girl, metamor- 
phosed by Proserpine. The Eomans, now and then, ate camomile 
at table, just as old country ladies, when tea was first introduced, 
and sent to -them as a present, used to boil the leaves, and serve 
them, at dinner, like spinach. Capers, in the olden time, were 
vulgar berries, and left for democratic digestion. "I once saw 
growing in Italy," said an Irish traveller, fit to be " own corres- 
pondent " to one of the morning papers, " the finest anchovies I 
ever beheld 1" A listener naturally doubted the alleged fact ; and 
the ofi'ended Irishman not only called him out, but shattered his 
knee-cap by a pistol shot. As he was leaping about with intensity 
of pain, the Irishman's second remarked to his principal, that he 
had made his adversary cut capers, at any rate. "Capers!" 
exclaimed the Hibernian, " capers ! 'faith, that 's it. Sure, Sir," 
he added, advancing to his antagonist, " you were right ; it was not 
anchovies, but capers, that I saw growing. I beg pardon : do n't 
think any more about it." Let us add, that, if the aristocratic 
ancients deeply declined capers, they were exceedingly fond of 
assafoetida, as a seasoning ingredient. Green ginger was also a 
popular condiment ; and it is commonly eaten in Madagascar at 
this day. I suppose that, in former times, Hull imported this pro- 
duction in large quantities, and that therefore one of her streets is 
called " the Land of Green Ginger." The Romans gave worm- 
wood wine to the charioteers, perhaps considering that the stom- 
achic beverage w^ould secure them from dizziness. 

I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronized rue as a 
nuUifier of poisons. He was in the habit of swallowing poisons, 
as people in the summer swallow ices ; and he was famous for 
inventing antidotes, to enable him to take them with impunity. 
One consequence is, that he has gained a sort of immortality in 



182 TAELE TKAITS. 

our pharmacopoeia ; and " Mitliridate," in pharmacy, is a compound 
medicine, in form of an electuary, serving as either a remedy or a 
preservative against poisons, being also accounted a cordial, opiate, 
sudorific, and alexipharmic. " Mithridate " is, or rather, I suppose, 
was, one of the capital medicines in the apothecaries' shops. The 
preparation of it, according to the direction of the College, is as 
follows ; and I request my readers to peruse it attentively, and to 
get it by heart, in case of necessity supervening. Here is the 
facile recipe : " Take of cinnamon, fourteen drachms ; of myrrh, 
eleven drachms ; agarich, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds of trea- 
cle-mustard, frankincense, Ohio turpentine, of each ten drachms; 
camel's hay, costus, Indian leaf, French lavender, long pepper, 
seeds of hartwort, juice of the rape of cistus, strained storax, opo- 
panax, strained galbanum, balsam of Gilead, or, in its stead, 
expressed oil of nutmegs, Russian castor, of each an ounce ; poly- 
mountain, water germander, the fruit of the balsam tree, seeds of 
the carrot of Crete, bdellium strained, of each seven drachms ; 
Celtic nard, gentian root, leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, seed 
of Macedonian parsley, the lesser Cardanum seeds freed from their 
husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum xirabic, opium strained, of each five 
drachms ; root of the sweet flag, root of wild valerian, anise-seed, 
sagapenum strained, of each three drachms; spignel, St. John's 
wort, juice of acacia, the bellies of scinks, of each two drachms and 
a half; of clarified honey, thrice the weight of all the rest : dis- 
solve the opium first in a little wine, and then mix it with the 
honey made hot. In the mean-time, melt together, in another 
vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, and the balsam of Gilead, 
or the expressed oil of nutmeg," (I have no doubt that one will do 
quite as well as the other ; and this must be highly satisfactory 
for sufferers to know,) " continually stirring them round, that they 
may not burn ; and, as soon as these are melted, add to them the 
hot honey, first by spoonful and afterwards more freely. Lastly, 
when this mixture is nearly cold, add by degrees the rest of the 
spices reduced to powder," — and^ as the French quack used to say 
of his specific for the toothache, if it does you no harm, it will 



FKurrs. 183 

certainly do you no good. For my own part, I think the remedy 
worse than the disease ; but a gentleman just poisoned may be of 
another opinion ; and I can only say, that if, with prussic acid 
knocking at his pylorus, he has leisure to wait till the above pre- 
scription is made up for him, — till the bellies of scinks and the 
camel's hay are procured, and till the ingredients are amalgamated 
" by degrees," — he will, if he survive the poison, the waiting, and 
the remedy, have deserved to be called, Kar' e^oxrjv, the "patient." 
But here are the pastry and the fruits ; and there are people 
who are given to believe that pastry and poison are not very wide 
asunder. 

When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to labour, he cut 
down their olive-trees. The Jews were forbidden to destroy fruit- 
trees, even in an enemy's country ; and it used to be a law in 
France, and may be so still, that when an individual had received 
permission to cut down one of his trees, it was on condition of 
his planting two. The planters of vineyards enjoyed many privi- 
leges under the Jewish dispensation, and heathen governments 
placed both vineyards and orchards under the protection of the 
most graceful of their deities, and these deities were supposed to 
have a special affection for particular trees. The Romans were 
skilled in forcing their fruits, which were produced at the third 
course, and not, as with the Greeks, at the second. 

Minerva is popularly said to have given birth to the olive, which 
was the emblem of Peace, the latter being naturally born of Wis- 
dom. But the poisoned shafts of Hercules were made of the 
olive, perhaps to symbolize those armed neutralities which are gen- 
erally so fatal to powers with whom the neutrals affect to be at 
peace. The Autocrat of Russia, for instance, has been dealing- 
very largely in olive shafts, tipped with death. But the olive was 
known to the world before Wisdom, taking flesh, sprang in her 
bright panoply from the brain of her sire, and was called Minerva. 
From Judea the olive was taken into Greece ; it was not planted 
within the territory of Rome until a later period ; and, finally, in 
Spain it found a soil as favourable to cultivation as that of Decap- 



184: TABLE TKAITS. 

olis, on lioly ground. Tlie Ancona olives were the most highly 
esteemed by the Roman patricians, at whose tables they opened 
and closed the banquet. While the olives were greedily swallowed, 
the expressed oil was distributed by way of largess to the people. 
It was declared to possess, if not a vital principle, something that 
stimulated and maintained vitality. Augustus, who was for ever 
whiningly hoping that he might die easily, and for ever chanting 
the prayer, " Euthanasia !" asked PoUio how he might best main- 
tain his health and strength in old age. " You have nothing in 
the world to do," said PoUio, " but to drink abundance of wine, 
and lubricate your imperial carcase with plenty of oil !" — a pre- 
scription which does not say much for the medical instruction of 
Pollio. Olive oil was so scarce at one time, in Europe, that in 8 17 
the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle authorized the priests to manufac- 
ture anointing oil from bacon. With regard to the fruit itself, it 
has not even yet undisputed possession of the public approval; 
and I am very much of the opinion of the farmer who, having 
taken some at his landlord's table, expressed his indignation on 
reaching home, that he had been served with gooseberries stewed 
in brine. 

The palm-tree wine of the Hebrews inspired song, and thence, 
perhaps, did the palm itself pass into the possession of the mytho- 
logical Muses. The palm-tree deserved to be a popular tree : its 
wood furnished man Avith a house, its branches with fuel; its 
leaves afforded him garments, and a bed ; and from them he could 
manufacture baskets, wherein to carry the fruit, bread, and cakes 
which he could make from its dates. I am only astonished that 
tradition has not made the palm, rather than the beech or 
the oak, the original tree which first fed, clothed, and sheltered 
man. 

The cherry, compared with the palm, is but as a rustic beauty, 
compared with Cleopatra. Mithridates and LucuUus share the 
glory of making men acquainted with its fruit. From Cerasus, 
in Asia, Lucullus, no doubt, transplanted a cultivated fruit-tree, 
of a peculiarly fine sort ; but the fruit itself was not unknown to 



FETJITS. 185 

the Romans long anterior to the time of Luculkis. It was slow 
in acquiring an esteem in Italy. The most extraordinary species 
of cherry with which I am acquainted, is the Australian cherry, 
which grows with the stone on the outside. But Nature, in 
Australia, is distinguished for her freaks. There the pears are 
made of wood, and salt-water fish abound in the fresh- water 
rivers ! The nastiest species I know of, grows in the vicinity of, 
and some of them within, the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, at Paris. 
They are magnificent to the eye, and are not ill-flavoured ; but, 
at the heart of each there is a maggot, as fat as one of Rubens's 
Cupids, and, saving a slight bitterness, with as much of the taste 
of the cherry in him as a citizen of ripe Stilton has of the cheese of 
which he is so lively a part. There is not a bad story told of an old 
and poor Spanish Grandee, who used to put on spectacles when he 
sat down to his modest dinner of bread and cherries, in order that 
the fruit might gain, apparently, in magnitude. There was philo- 
sophy in this pleasant conceit ! If the poor nobleman had had a 
dish of our cherries, from Kent, Berks, or Oxfordshire, he would 
not have stood in need of his merry delusion. 

How grateful to the palate is the Armenian ajDricot, blushing, 
in its precocity, like a young nymph ; or the Persian peach, for a 
couple of which the Romans would give a score of pounds ! The 
peach has an evil tradition with it. It is said to have been ori- 
ginally poisonous, but to have lost its deadliness when it was 
transplanted. Perhaps the peculiarly peachy odour of prussic acid 
may have contributed to give currency to a very long-lived, but 
entirely foundationless, tradition, — except, indeed, that poison may 
be extracted from the kernel ; but so may arsenic from a Turkey 
carpet, and, indeed, from applepips also, as Sir Fitzroy Kelly told 
the jury, when endeavouring to save from the gallows a man who 
had murdered his mistress, in order that he might not put in peril 
his respectability ! Perhaps, the plum tree, whether of Africa or 
Asia, from Egypt or Damascus, has been more fatal to health, if 
not to life, than any other of the stone-fruits. When Pliny com- 
plained of their superabundant propagation in Italy, he probably 



186 TABLE TRAITS. 

had in view the usual consequence of a very plentiful plum 
season. 

The apricot was not known in France till the eleventh century, 
and then they were accounted dear at a farthing each. In the 
same century cherries used to appear at the royal table in May. 
To effect this, lime was laid at the roots of the tree, which was 
irrigated with warm water ! Louis XIII. was fond of early fruit, 
and he had strawberries in March, and figs in June : this is more 
than the most expert fig-rearers in Sussex ever accomplished ! The 
fig used to be esteemed as only inferior to that compound of lus- 
cious savours, the pine, — a fruit which, in the seventeenth century, 
•,vas religiously patronized by the Jesuits. The same sort of sanc- 
tion was given in the East to dates, though these were fashionable 
in Rome, after a basket of them had been sent from Jericho to 
Augustus. The Tunis dates are the best ; but indulgence in them 
is said to loosen the teeth, and produce scurvy. The Tunisian 
ladies, however, were as fond of them as the French ladies were 
of sweet citrons, before oranges were patronized by Louis XIV. 
The ladies used to carry them about, and occasionally suck them, 
the operation being considered excellent to produce ruby lips. 
The citron was hardly less popular than the Reine Claude plum, 
which received its pretty name from the Queen of Francis I., and 
daughter of Louis XII. I have noticed the Sussex fig ; the white 
fig of the Channel Islands is also highly prized ; and there is a 
tree at Hampton Court renowned for its fruit, but they who eat 
had better not too curiously inquire as to where the root of that 
productive tree penetrates, in order to accomplish its productive- 
ness. In Sicily, they acupuncture the tree, and drop into it a little 
oil, and this is said to improve the flavour of the fruit. To what 
I have previously said of the peach, I may add here what the 
Chinese say of it; namely, that it produces eternity of life, and 
prevents corruption until the end of the world. This species 
would be a popular one in England. 

Some writers assert that the apple was originally an African ; 
but a negro with a red nose would be an anomaly; and the apple- 



FEurrs. 187 

tree does not look as if it came from the country of the children 
of the Sim. Nevertheless, historians assert that it crossed the 
Mediterranean, and reached I^ormandy through Spain and France. 
The apple has been as productive of similes as of cider ; and per- 
haps the prettiest in that of Jeremy Taylor, who says, in his 
Sermon on the " Marriage Ring," that the " celibate, like the fly 
in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness ; but sits 
alone, and is confined, and dies in siftgularity :" — a figure of speech, 
by the way, not highly calculated to frighten a bachelor. But, 
after all, the sentiment of Jeremy Taylor is preferable to that of 
Gregory of Nazianzum, who calls a wife "an acquired evil; and, 
what is worse, one that cannot be put away." However this may 
be, apples were once productive of matrimony in Wales. When 
the fruit-dealers there could not find a market, they proclaimed a 
dance. The revellers paid entrance-money, and received apples in 
return. These meetings were called " apple lakings ;" and the fruit 
was sauce for many a consequent wedding dinner. The finest 
used to be kept for accompaniment to the roast goose eaten on St. 
Crispin's Day. Brides, in remote times, used to carry a love-apple 
in their bosoms ; as fond thereof as the pitman's wife of l^orthum- 
berland was of the two lambs which she suckled, after their dams 
had been killed in a storm. This was a more creditable afiection 
than that of Marc Antony's daughter for a lamprey, which she 
adorned with ear-rings, and which she exhibited at dinner ; as 
Lord Erskine did the leeches which had cured him of some com- 
plaint, and which, enclosed in a bottle, he sent round with the 
wine. He called one "Cline" and the other "Home," from the 
great surgeons of those names; and noble guests, before filling 
their glasses, gravely inspected the leeches, and then duly passed 
on the reptiles and the mne. 

This is what a Frenchman would have called a Hriste plaisan- 
terie a VAnglaise ;" and, by the way, I may remark, that Theophile 
de Garancieres imputes the alleged melancholic nature of 
Englishmen to the great use which we make of sugar. Our sires 
used to make one curious use of sugar, undoubtedly; namely, 



188 TABLE TEAITS. 

when tliey put it into the mouth of the dying, in order that their 
souls might pass away with less bitterness ! 

There is a German proverb which says, that " it is unadvisable 
to eat cherries with potentates." In English this might mean, 
" Do not make too free with your betters." Few royal families, 
however, have given their inferiors more frequent oj^portunities to 
" eat cherries " with them, than that of Prussia. I am reminded 
of this v/hile upon the subject of pine-apjDle, a slice of which was 
once given by Frederick William III. to a lad employed in the 
gardens at Sans Souci. " Here," said the King, pleasantly, " eat, 
enjoy, and reflect while thou art eating. Now, what does it taste 
like ?" The boy looked puzzled, as he munched the pine ; 
thought of all the most delightful things that had ever passed 
over his palate and clung to his memory, and, at last, with a 
satisfied expression, exclaimed, " I think, — yes, it does, — it tastes 
like sausage !" The courtiers laughed -aloud ; and the King, 
philosophizing on the boy's answer, said, " Well, every one has his 
own standard of taste, guiding his feelings and judgment, and 
each one believes himself to be right. One fancies -he discovers 
in the pine-apple the flavour of the melon ; another, of the pear ; 
a third, the plum. Yon lad, in his sphere of tastes, finds therein 
his favourite food — the sausage." 

The lad's answer was as much food for mirth at Sans Souci, as 
was that of the Eton boy who was invited by Queen Adelaide to 
dine at Windsor Castle, and who was honoured with a seat at Her 
Majesty's side. The boy was bashful, — the Queen encouraging ; 
and, when the sweets were on the table, she kindly asked him 
what he would like to take. The Etonian's eyes glanced hur- 
riedly and nervously from dish to dish ; pointing to one of which, 
he, in some agitation, exclaimed, " One of those twopenny tarts !" 
His young eye had recognised the favourite " tuck " he was in 
the habit of indulging in at the shop in Eton, and he asked for it 
according to the local phrase in fashion. Reverting to the lad 
who compared pine- apple to German sausage, I may remark, that 
pine-apple is most to be enjoyed when the weather is of that con- 



FRUITS. 189 

dition Avliich made Sydney Smith once express a wish, that ho 
could " slip out of his fat, and sit in his bones." 

The quince is a native of Cydon, in Crete ; and first Greece 
and then Rome, Gaul, and Spain, learned to love the fruit, and 
drink a quince wine, which was said to be excellent either as a 
stomachic or as a counter-poison. 

Galen recommended the pear as an astringent, which is more 
than a modern practitioner will do. St. Francis de Paul intro- 
duced one sort into France when he paid a medical visit to Louis 
XL The species was named from the saint, " le hon Chretien^ 

The apple may lay fair claim to antiquity of birth. • The fruit 
has been diversely estimated by divers nations ; but the general 
favour has usually awaited it. Li ancient times, both in Greece 
and Persia, it was the custom for a bridegroom at his nuptial 
feast to partake of a single apple, and of nothing else. The 
origin of the custom is said to arise from a decree issued by 
Solon. It was the sight of an apple that always put Vladislas, 
King of Poland, into fits. It is the best fruit that can be taken as 
an accompaniment to wine ; and the best sorts for such a pur- 
pose are the Ribstone Pippin and the Coster Pearmain. The 
golden apples stolen by Hercules were lemons; and they are 
suspected to have been the " Median apples " of Theophrastus. 
The Romans, at first, employed this Asiatic fruit only as a means 
for keeping moths out of garments ; from this household use it 
passed into the ancient pharmacopoeia, and it took rank among 
the counter-poisons. Its acknowledged reputation in scurvy and 
punch, if I may so express myself, v>^as not made until a much 
later period of civilization. The orange disputes with the lemon 
the honour of being the " Hesperides apples," — which is a dispute 
of a very Hibernian character. China was probably its native 
place ; and the Portuguese oranges are merely descendants of the 
original " Chinaman." It was not known in France until intro- 
duced there by the Constable de Bourbon. In England, an 
orange, stuck full of cloves, was a fitting New Year's present 
from a lover, — being typical of warmth and sweetness. 



190 TABLE TEAITS. 

The fig-tree appears to liave been, like the vine, very early used 
as a symbol of peace and plenty. It was a tree of Eden ; yet 
the Athenians claimed it as a native tree, asserting by way of 
proof, that it had been given them by Ceres, — not reflecting that 
Ceres may have brought it from a region farther east. If it be 
commonly employed in Scripture as a symbol, so an American 
poet has taken it, with its scriptural allusions, to illustrate 
worldly marriages, of which he says, that — 



• they are like unto 



Jeremiah's figs : 
The good are very good indeed ; 
The bad, not fit for pigs." 

The authorities of Attica were so fond of their figs, that they 
passed a law against the exportation of the fruit. The advocates 
of free trade in figs broke the law when they could do so with 
profit ; and the men who affected to be on friendly terms with 
them, in order to betray their proceedings to the Magistrates, 
were called by a name which is now given to all fawning traitors, 
they were styled, sycophants, or " fig-declarers." Even the philo- 
sophers in Greece became greedy in presence of figs ; and with 
figs famished armies have been braced anew for the fight. The 
athletm ate of them before appearing in the arena; and more 
than one invasion has been traced to the taste of the invader for 
figs. Medical men were divided in opinion as to the merits of 
this fruit. It was considered indigestible ; but, to remedy that, 
almonds were recommended to be eaten with it ! The Eomans, 
perhaps, were wiser, who took pepper with them, as we do with 
melon ; and Dr. Madden says that we should never eat figs at all, 
if we could only spend half an hour in Smyrna, and see them 
packed. So, as I have before said, a sight of the kitchen, just 
before dinner, would take away appetite ; but as people do not 
commonly go to Smyrna, or sit with their cooks, why, figs and 
dinners will continue to be eaten. Modern professors have 
resembled ancient philosophers in an uncontrollable appetite for 



PKUITS. 191 

figs. Who has not heard of the famous Oxford fig, which, in ita 
progress to luscious maturity, was protected by an inscription 
appended to it, conveying information to the efi"ect that " this is 
the Principal's fig!" which a daring Undergraduate one day 
devoured, and added insult to injury by changing the old 
placard for one on which was written, " A fig for the Principal ?" 
The felonious fig-stealer must have been more rapid in his sacri- 
lege, than the poet Thomson was in his method of enjoying his 
own peaches in his garden at Kew. Attired in the loosest and 
dirtiest of morning-gowns, the author of the " Castle of Indo- 
lence " used to watch his peaches ripening in the sun. When he 
saw one bursting with liquid promise, he was too lazy to take his 
unwashed hands from his well-worn pockets, and pluck the blush- 
ing treasure. Ko ; " Jamie " simply sauntered up to it, contem- 
plated it for a moment with a yawn, and finished his yawn by 
biting a piece out of the fruit, — -leaving the ghastly remains on 
the branch for wasps and birds to divide between them. 

As the Athenian rulers kept their figs, so did the Persian 
Kings their walnuts, — and more selfishly ; for no one but their 
most sacred Majesties dared eat any ; but one would think that 
even they would find it hard to digest all the walnuts that the 
country could produce. It is averred, that walnuts entered 
into the Mithridatic recipe against poison. The modern recipe, 
called " Mithridate," I have given elsewhere; but that which 
Pompey is said to have found in the palace of the King whom he 
had overthrown, was as follows : " Pound, with care, two walnuts, 
two dried figs, twenty pounds of rue, and a grain of salt.'''' Yes, 
we should say it must be taken cicm grano. Howbeit, the royal 
physician goes on to say, " Swallow this mixture, — precipitate it 
vfith a little wine, — and you have nothing to fear from the action 
of the most active poison for the space of four-and-twenty hours." 
There would, probably, be less to fear after that time had elapsed 
than before. 

Nuts have not had respectability conferred on them, even by 
Nero, who was wont to go incog, to the upper gallery of the 



192 TABLE TKAITS. 

theatre, and take delight in pelting them on the bald head of the 
Praetor, who sat below. That official knew the offender, and was 
rewarded for bearing the attack good-humouredly; and thence, 
perhaps, the proverb which characterizes something falling, at 
once sudden and pleasant, by the term, "That's nuts!" Of 
course, nuts were in fashion; not so chestnuts, — these were as 
much disliked by the Patricians as the filbert and hazel were said, 
in France, to be hated by the sun. When they were ripening, the 
inhabitants used to issue forth at sunrise, and endeavour to 
frighten the luminary out of the firmament, by making a horrid 
uproar, with pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. And this 
was done under a Christian dispensation. The people were not 
heathen Chinese, trying to cure an eclipsed planet by attacking 
the dragon that w^as supposed to be swallowing it, v/ith a tijita- 
marre of caldron, kettle, tongs, and trivet. 

The Athenians were great hands at dumplings, consisting of 
fruit, covered with a light and perfumed paste; and Ehodes, 
verifying the proverb, that " extremes meet," was as famous for its 
gingerbread as for its Colossus. The Roman Vv^edding-cake was a 
simple mixture of sweet wine and flour ; and the savilum pie, 
made of flour, cheese, honey, and eggs, was a dish to make all 
sorts of guests jubilant. It was, in short, the national pie ; and if 
there were a dish that was more- popular, it was the artocreas, a 
huge mince-piece, and the imperial pie of Verus, compounded of 
sow's flank, pheasant, peacock, ham, and wild boar, all hashed 
together, and covered with crust. If Emperors invented pies, so 
did philosophers create cakes ; and the lihuna of Cato was a real 
cheese-cake, that gave as much delight as any of the same author's 
works in literature. Cheese was a favourite foundation for many 
of the Roman cakes ; but he was a bold man who added chalk, 
and so invented .the ])lacenta. Yet the placenta was eaten as 
readily as Charles XII. swallowed raspberry-tarts, Frederick 11. 
Savoy cakes, or Marshal Saxe — who loved pastry, pastrycooks, and 
pastrycooks' daughters — macaroons. 

The Church honoured pastry, — or would so pious a King as St. 



PASTE Y. 193 

Louis have raised the pastrycooks to the dignity of a guild ? The 
Abbey of St. Denis, long before this, stipulated with the tenant- 
farmers, that they should deliver a certain quantity of flour, to 
make pastry with ; and, in some cases, in France, portions of the 
rent for land was to be paid in puff pastry. This was at a time 
when fennel-root tooth-picks used to appear at table, thrust into 
the preserved fruits, and every one was expected to help himself. 
Certainly our refined neighbours had some questionable customs. 
See what L'Etoile says: (1596:) '■'-Les confitures seches et les 
massepains y etaient si jpeu epargms que les dames et demoiselles 
etaient contraintes de s'en decharger sur les pages et laquais, auxquels 
on les haillait tout entiers." 

Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne, was 
never suspected of intermeddling with the foreign policy of 
the kingdom ; but he was something renowned for his appetite, 
and for the bent of it towards pastry. I think it is Archdeacon 
Coxe, in his " Life of the Duke of Marlborough," who says of this 
illustrious Prince, that he would leave the battle-field, in the very 
heat of action, and come into camp, with the hungTy inquiry, if it 
were not yet dinner-time. This was something worse than 
drawing off the hounds, or unloading the fowling-pieces, because 
the " Castle bell " was peremptorily ringing to luncheon. Prince 
George was just the sort of man — fond of good living, and able to 
entertain others with the same predilection- — who was likely to be 
surrounded by parasites; and the remembrance of this fact 
suggests that, while the wine is passing round, I may venture to 
give a sketch of that ancient and remarkable gentleman, "the 
Parasite." It is better than getting upon controversial subjects, 
which are productive of anything but unanimity. I remember 
one of the very pleasantest of " after-dinners " being marred by a 
guest, who, having slipped into the assertion that the Jews were 
the earliest of created people, was indiscreet enough to tiy to 
maintain what he had asserted, and weak enough to be angry at 
finding it summarily rejected. Why, Father Abraham himself 
was but a foreign Heathen, from Ur of the Chaldees; and to 
9 



194: TABLE TEAITS. 

claim primeval antiquity for the Jews is only as absurd as if one 
was to say, that Yankees and mint-juleps were anterior to Alfred's 
cakes and the Anglo-Saxons. 

But many a hasty assertion has been simply the effect of an 
antagonism between imperfect chymification and the oppressed 
intellect. Mind and matter have much influence on each other ; 
and, for the guidance of those interested in such questions, I may, 
while on the subject of dinner, notice, that from Dr. Beaumont's 
" Table," drawn out to show the mean time of digestion in the 
stomach (or chymification) of various articles of food, we learn 
that boiled tripe ranks first in amiable facility, being disposed of 
in about one hour. Venison steak requires some half hour more. 
Boiled turkey and roast pig are classed together, as requiring two 
hours and ,twenty-fivo minutes for the process of digestion ; while 
roast turkey and hashed meat demand five minutes more. Fricas- 
seed chicken is not more facile of digestion than boiled salt beef, 
both requiring two hours and three-quarters. Boiled mutton, 
broiled beefsteak, and soft-boiled eggs take three hours; while 
roast beef and old strong cheese trouble the stomach for some 
three hours and a half. Eoast duck, and fowls, whether boiled or 
roasted, are alike slow of digestion : they require four hours as 
their mean time of chymification, and are only exceeded by boiled 
cabbage, which requires full half-an-hour more. I borrow these 
details from an article in the " Journal of Psychological Medicine," 
for January, 18-51, a periodical edited by Dr. Forbes Winslow. I 
believe I do not err in attributing the article in question (" Men- 
tal Dietetics ") to the able pen of the accomplished Editor him- 
self, than whom no man has a better right to speak ex cathedra 
on the subject in question. It will be seen by the following 
extract from this article, that diet influences the mind as well as 
the body. " The nutritive particles of the food," says Dr. Win- 
slow, " being in the form of chyle, mixed with the blood, and sup- 
plying it with the elements which enable it to repair the waste of 
the animal system, it is obvious that the health of both the body and 
of the mind, must depend on the quality and quantity of the vital 



DR. FOEBES WINSLOW. 195 

stream. According to Lecanu, the proportion of the red globules 
of the blood may be regarded as a measure of vital energy ; for 
the action of the serum and of the globules on the nervous system 
is very different. The former scarcely excites it, the latter do so 
powerfully. Now those causes which tend to increase the mass 
of blood, tend also to increase the proportion of red globules ; 
whilst those which tend to diminish the mass of blood, tend to 
diminish the proportion of the globules. The result is obvious. 
A large quantity of stimulating animal food, without a proper 
amount of exercise, augments the number of the red globules, and 
diminishes the aqueous j)art of the blood. Hence the nervous 
system becomes oppressed, the brain frequently congested, and 
the intellectual faculties no longer enjoy their wonted activity. 
In the mean time, the system endeavours to relieve itself by 
throwing a counter-stimulus upon certain other organs, the func- 
tions of which are morbidly increased. The blood, in such cases, 
becomes preternaturally thickened, and its coagulum unusually 
firm. On the other hand, if the system be not supplied with the 
requisite amount of nutrition, the blood becomes, by the loss of its 
red corpuscles, impoverished in quality, and, in cases of extreme 
abstinence, diminished in quantity. In these cases the powers of 
the mind soon become enfeebled." 

But we will pass from these scientific matters, to seek the 
company of one who, if ignorant of science, was, generally, a 
great man in the profession of his peculiar art, — the ancient para- 
site. 



196 



TABLE TitAITS. 



THE PARASITE. 



— — " Pity those whose flanks grow great, 
Swell'd by the lard of others' meat." — Hbrrick. 

Para, " near," and sitos, " corn," pretty well explain what the 
Greeks understood by the word "parasite." As the worthless 
weed among the wheat, so was this classical Skimpole in the 
field of society. As the weed hung for support to the sub- 
stance that promised to yield it, so did the parasite cling to 
the side of those who kept good tables, and lacked wit to enliven 
them. 

The parasite was too delicate a fellow to allow of invidious dis- 
tinctions. He supped or dined wherever he was invited, and at 
marriage-feasts waited for no invitation at all. There he was in 
his glory. He was the cracker of jokes, and of the heads of those 
who did not agree with every word that fell from the lips of the 
Amphitryon of the hour. He usually, however, got his own skull 
bruised by the watch, when staggering home through the dark, 
" full of the god," and without a slave to direct his steps. But it 
was only with the morning that he became conscious at once of 
pain from the bruises, and the necessity of providing, at the cost 
of others, for his own breakfast. 

These professional " livers out " were, however, not always unat- 
tended. The victims whom they flattered sometimes lent them a 
slave. Their wardrobe seldom extended beyond two suits, one 
for the public, and one for wear at home. They looked abroad 
for dupes, just as our ring-droppers used to do, and for the same 
purpose. The parasite generally attached himself to the first 
simple-looking personage he encountered, provided he bore 
with him proofs of being a man who could afford to hve well. 
Simplex usually swallowed with complacency all the three-piled 
flattery with- which the parasite troubled him ; and if he were 
expecting friends to dinner, the gastronome, who wanted one, was 



THE PAKASITE. 197 

probably invited. But tbere was always an understanding, that, 
in return for the invitation, he was to maintain, for the diversion 
of the company, a continual fire of jokes. If he proved but a 
sorry jester, he was promptly scourged into the street, down 
which he ran, nothing abashed, to look for hearers whom indiffer- 
ent jests could move to ready laughter. 

The parasite looked upon the fortune and table of others as a 
property which was properly to be held in common. Monsieur 
Prudhon really started a parasitical precept, when he tried to 
establish that what belonged to one man belonged to a great 
many others besides. But if, as regarded his own share in property 
that was not his own, the parasite was so far a Communist, he was 
the most charitable of fellows, his earnest prayer being, that none 
of his patrons might ever fall into such distress as to be unable to 
give good dinners. The dinner-table was his arena. If he got 
but one meal a day, he consumed enough thereat to satisfy half-a- 
dozen appetites ; and, as he ate, it was matter of perfect indiffer- 
ence to him whether he was called upon to find wit for the guests, 
or to be the butt of their own. You might buffet him till he were 
senseless, provided the blows were afterwards paid for in brimming 
glasses. 

He was always first at a feast ; and as he was as common an 
object at a feast as the sauce itself, so " sauce " was the common 
name for a parasite. There he was not only wit, butt, and bully, 
but porter also ; and his ofiace was not merely to knock down the 
drunken, but to carry them out when incapable of performing 
that office for themselves. The parasites had a dash, too, of the 
" bravo " in their character, and let themselves out for a dozen 
other purposes besides dining. The stronger-bodied and the 
braver-souled let out their strength. " Do you want a wrestler ?" 
says the parasite, in Antiphseus, " here I am, an Antaeus. If you 
want a door forced, I have a head like a ram to do it ; and I can 
scale a wall like Capaneus. Telamon was not stronger than my 
wrist; and I can wreathe into the ear of beauty like smoke." 
Some of these Bobadils are even said to have ventured into battle, 



198 TABLE TRAITS. 

and to have especially distinguislied themselves in the Commis- 
sariat department ! 

Others boasted of their powers of fasting, — always provided 
good pay assured them of compensating banquets at the end of 
their service. " I can live on as little as Tithymallus," says one ; 
and the individual in question is said to have supported life on 
eight lupines a day, — a hint to Poor-Law Commissioners. Another 
makes a merit of being as thin as Philippides, who, like Hood's 
friend, was so thin, that, when he stood sideways you could not 
see him ! The merits of a third are summed up by him in saying, 
that he can live on water, like a frog ; on vegetables, like a cater- 
pillar ; can go without bathing, like Dirtiness herself, if there be 
such a deity ; can live in winter with no roof but the sky, like a 
bird; can support heat, and sing beneath a noon-day sun, like a 
grasshopper ; do without oil, like the dust ; walk barefooted from 
break of day, like the crane ; and keep wide awake all night, like 
the owl. 

Of such a profession the parasite was proud, and even declared 
that its origin was divine ; and that Jupiter Amicalis (Zevg 6 
^iXiog) was its patron saint! As Jove entered where he chose, 
ate and drank of what most took his fancy, and, after creating an 
atmosphere of enjoyment, retired without having any thing to 
pay; just so, it was argued, was it with the parasite. In Attica, 
parasites were admitted to the commemorative banquets that fol- 
lowed the sacrifices to Hercules ; proof enough that they were 
accounted as being the same kidney as heroes. In later times 
came degenerate men and manners ; and then, instead of honora- 
ble men sitting with gods and heroes, the office of parasite was 
so degraded, that none but the hungry wits exercised it. Flattery 
to mortals then took the place of praise to gods. The parasite 
was ready to laud every act of the master of the feast, — 

- laudare paraUis 



Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus,''^ 
and to eulogize a great number of other acts besides, as may be 



THE PASASITE. 199 

found noted by those wlio are very curious, and not over-nice, in 
the fragments of Diodorus of Sinope. 

The fellows were witty, too, however degraded. When Chore- 
phon had, uninvited, slijoped into a vacant position at a wedding- 
dinner, the gynseconomes, as inspectors of the feast, counting the 
guests, came upon him at last, and said, " You are the thirty-first : 
it is against the law ; you must withdraw." " I do not dispute the 
law," said the parasite, "but I object to your manner of counting. 
Begin the numbering by me, and your conclusions will be undis- 
putable." 

The parasite, Philoxenus, happened to be supping with a host 
who gave his guests nothing but black bread. " This is not a loaf, 
but a spectre," whispered the professional wit : " if Ave eat any 
more of it, we shall soon be in the shades." 

There was more wit in Bithys, the parasite of the avaricious 
King Lysimachus, who one day, at dinner, flung a wooden scor- 
pion at the flatterer. The latter affected great fright, but after- 
wards remarked, " I will, in my turn, terrify you, O King ; be 
good enough to give me a talent," 

Clisophus, another of this strange brotherhood, either fooled or 
flattered King Philip to the very top of his bent. The King hav- 
ing lost an eye, Clisophus always sat down to dinner in his pres- 
ence with a bandage over one of his own ; and when the Monarch 
limped, from a wound in the leg, Clisophus went " halting at his 
side ;" and if, by chance, an ill odour affected the royal nostrils, 
Clisophus wore, all day long, a grimace upon his features, as if he 
were sick with disgust. However absurd this may appear, the 
parasites of Louis XIV. flattered him as grossly as the original 
practitioners did the early and heathen Kings. People shaved their 
heads and wore periwigs, because the monarch, having little hair 
of his own, wore long locks cropped from other heads. So, when 
once at dinner he complained of having lost his teeth, a young- 
flatterer who sat next him swore, with a broad smile which dis- 
played his incisors, that nobody had teeth now-a-days. And 
again, when the King, on his seventieth birth-day, inquired the age 



200 TABLE TEAITS. 

of a person from whom lie had received a petition, the reply was, 
that the person was of everybody's age, — about three-score and 
ten. Nay, the Court preachers flattered the Sovereign quite as 
coarsely as the mere courtiers, and would not have received invi- 
tations to dinner, if they had not done so. " My brethren," said 
one of these, " all men must die ;" and at that very moment he 
perceived the eye of the King glaring uneasily upon him : — " that 
is to say. Sire, almost all men !" and the complaisant preacher was 
at the royal table that day. The same parasitical spirit prevailed 
at the English Court, especially when bolster neckcloths were worn, 
simply because the King was compelled to wear one, in consequence 
of a disease in the glands of the neck. But, to translate the sen- 
timent of the French poet,- — 

•' From royal example slaves have never shrunk : 
When Auguste tippled, Poland soon got drunk. 
When the great Monarch breathed the air of love, 
Hey, presto, pass ! Paris was Yenus' grove ! 
But turn'd a Churchman and devout, alas ! 
The courtiers ran and beat their breasts at mass." 

It is said by ancient writers that the species of flattery which 
Clisophus paid Philip, was obligatory on all the guests and officials 
in the ancient royal Courts of Arabia. There, if the King sufibred 
in any member, every courtier was bound to be in pain in the same 
limb. This species of flattery was, in fact, a conclusion logically 
arrived at ; for the Arab lawgivers said that it would be absurd in 
the courtiers to vie with one another for the honour of being bur- 
ied alive with the King defunct, if they did not suffer with him 
in all his bodily pains when living. 

The Celtic King of the Sotians maintained a body of men who 
were called the " Eucholimes," or the " Death Volunteers." They 
amounted to six hundred men ; they were lodged, clothed, and 
tended like the King, with whom they daily sat at meat ; but they 
were also bound to die with their master ; and it is alleged that 
the chance was eagerly incurred, and that no man ever failed, when 



THE PAEASITE. 201 

called upon by tlie King's decease, to accompany His Majesty on a 
visit to his royal cousin, Orcus. 

But your regular parasite preferred to live and flatter living 
Monarclis. " See," said Niceas, when he saw Alexander troubled 
by a fly that stung him, " there is one that will be King over all 
flies ; for he has imbibed the blood of him who is King over all 
men." The flattery was not more delicate which Chirisophus once 
paid at dinner to Dionysius the Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing the 
King smile at the other end of the table, burst into a roar of 
laughter. The King asked, " Wherefore ?" seeing that the. para- 
site could not have heard the joke. " True," said Chirisophus ; 
" but I saw that Your Majesty had heard something worth laugh- 
ing at, and I laughed in sympathy." This species of parasite is 
not uncommon in English houses ; but perhaps they do their office 
more refinedly than Chirisophus. 

The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far more disgusting 
in their adulation. They were simply absurd, when they pre- 
tended to be short-sighted, like him, and to be unable to see a dish, 
unless they thrust their noses into it. But they were filthy fol- 
lowers when they ofi"ered their faces to the King to " void his 
rheum " upon, and even went to extremes of nastiness at which 
human nature shudders, but at which Dionysius smiled. And yet 
Dionysius was hailed by some of them as a god. It was the cus- 
tom, we are told, in Sicily, for every individual to make sacrifices, 
in his own house, before the figures of the nymphs, to get devoutly 
drunk before the altar, and to dance round it as long as the pious 
devotee could keep upon his legs. It was accounted as an exquisite 
piece of flattery in Damocles, the parasite, that he refused to per- 
form such service before inanimate deities, while he went through 
the whole duty before Dionysius as his god. The Athenians, it 
will be remembered, were horror-stricken at such impious lauda- 
tion as this. They fined Demades ten talents for having proposed 
to award divine honours to Alexander ; and Timagoras, whom 
they sent as Ambassador to the King of Persia, they put to death 
for compromising the Athenian dignity by prostrating himself 



202 TABLE TEAITS. 

before that King. And, indeed, let us do justice to Alexander 
himself. He had more than misgiving touching of his own alleged 
divinity. He had once — " his custom in the afternoon " — eaten 
and drunk so enormously, that in the evening he was forced 
to a necessity which compels very mortal people, — take physic. 
He made as many contortions, on swallowing it, as a refractory 
child ; and Philarches, his parasite, remarked, with a rascally hypo- 
critical smile, " Ah ! what must be the sufferings of mortal man 
under such medicine, if you, who are a divinity, feel it so much !" 
The idea of a deity drawing health out of an apothecary's phial 
was too much even for Alexander, who declined to accept the 
apotheosis, and called Philarches an ass. 

But Philarches was only giving the King a taste of the para- 
site's professional craft. The noble ISTicostratus of Argos quite as 
impiously flattered the Sovereign of Persia, when, for the sake 
of currying favour with that majestic barbarian, he every night, in 
his own house, prepared a solemn supper, richly provided, and 
offered to the genius of the King, (rco Satfiovi rov BadiXeGig^ for 
no better reason than that he had learned that such was the cus- 
tom in Persia. Whether he profited or not by this delicate atten- 
tion, Theopompus does not inform us. 

The Anactes or Princes of the royal family of Salamis main- 
tained two distinct families, in whom, if I understand Athenseus 
rightly, the office of flatterer (and of spy, I may add) was heredi- 
tary. These were the Gerginoi and the Promalangai. The former 
did the dirty work of circulating among the people, worming them- 
selves into their confidence, getting invited to their tables, and 
then reporting to the Promalangai all they had heard. The last- 
named took such portions of the report as were worth communi- 
cating to the Anactes, with whom they sat at table, where such a 
dish of scandal was daily served as would puzzle the social spies 
of Paris to set before their lord. 

But the profession was not accounted vile ; and the professors 
themselves gloried in their vocation. They extolled the easiness 
of their life, compared, for instance, with that of the painter, or 



THE PARASITE. 203 

the labourer, or, in fact, with that of any other individual but 
those of their own guild. " Truly," says one, in a fragment of 
Antiphanes, " since the most important business of life is to play, 
laugh, trifle, and drink, I should like to know where you would 
find a condition more agreeable than ours." 

Once, and onfce only, a faction of parasites contrived to get 
possession of a kingdom ; and the dinners they gave, and the 
government they maintained, are matters to which description 
can hardly do justice. The faction in question was headed by, 
and almost solely consisted of, three men in Erythra, who stood, 
in regard to Cnopus, the King, as " adorers and flatterers " 
(jTpoaicvveg ical noXatceg). They murdered their Sovereign, and, 
by a coup-d^-etat,' possessed themselves of his authority. Their 
names were Ortyges, Irus, and Echarus ; and they ruled with a 
triple rod of iron, held in very efleminate fingers. They silenced 
all opponents by slaying them ; and, when no one dared utter a 
breath against them, they vaunted their universal popularity. 
They administered a ferociously absurd sort of justice at the gates 
of Erythra, where they sat decked out in purple and gold. They 
were sandaled like women, wore ornaments only suitable to 
females, and sat down to dinner in diadems that dazzled the 
company. 

The guests were once free citizens, who were now compelled to 
bear the litters of their ^:)a?•^'e/^^^ masters, to cleanse the streets, 
and then, by way of contrast, to attend the banquet of the 
Triumvirs, with their wives and daughters. If they objected to 
drag these latter to the scene of splendid infamy, the objection 
was only made at the price of death. The unhappy women were 
nothing the safer from insult by the decease of their natural 
protectors ; and the scenes at the palace were such as only the 
un cleanest of demons could rejoice in. If the authorities had 
reason to be grave, the whole city was compelled to affect 
sorrow; and duly-appointed oflBcers went round, with hard- 
thonged whips, to scourge a sense of " decent horror " into the 
countenances of the bewildered inhabitants. Things at last 



204 TABLE TEAITS. 

readied such a pitch, of extravagant atrocity, tliat the people 
took heart of grace, screwed up their courage by Chian wine, and 
swept their oppressors into Hades; — and, for years afterwards, 
commemorative banquets celebrated the restoration of the people 
from the oppression of the parasites. 

I would recommend those who would see the parasite in action, 
to study the comedies of Plautus, wherein he figures as necessarily 
as the impertinent valet in a Spanish comedy. Plautus calls the 
parasites poetm^ as being given to lying ; and it is singular that 
the Gauls called their poets " parasites," as being fond of good 
living, and not being always in a condition to procure it. They 
had their " dull season :" it was when the wealthy were at their 
villas ; at which time the parasites dined upon nothing, in town, 
with good " Duke Humphrey." When the city was again resorted 
to by the rich, then the parasite might sometimes be seen 
j)urchasing, by order of his patron, the provisions for the evening 
feast. We find one of these gentry, in Plautus, boasting that he 
knows a story that will be worth thirty dinners to him. Before 
the era of printing, the parasite, with his jests and histories, was 
a sort of living Circulating Library. Saturion (another of 
Plautus's pictures of the parasite) is at peace with himself, 
because, as he says, he can provide for his daughter by bequeath- 
ing to her his rich collection of jokes and dinner-stories. "They 
are all sparkling Attic," he says; "and there is not a dull 
Sicilian anecdote among them." 

If the race were, in some sense of the word, " literary," they 
were not at all in love with science, or the improvements wrought 
by its application. Witness the bitterness with which Plautus 
makes one denounce the sun-dial, then of recent introduction. 
Before that tell-tale appeared, dinners used to be served when 
people were hungry ; but now even hungry people wait for the 
appointed hour. In short, throughout life, they worked but for 
the sake of the banquet and wine-pot ; and even after death, they 
longed for libations, as appears in the ejDitaph on the parasite, 
Sergius of Pola, who is made to say, from the grave, — 



THE PAEASITE. 205 

" Si urhani perhiberi vultis 
Arenti meo cineri, 
Cantharo piaculuni vinarium festinaie.'' 

" If you've any regard for this corpse here of mine, 
Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine." 

Finally, these diners-out by profession"were essentially selfish.; 
and the fire of their attachment blazed up, or died away, accord- 
ing to that in the kitchen of the Amphitryon by whom they 
were maintained. 

A good specimen of the parasite of the last century may be 
found in the Captain Cormorant of Anstey's " Bath Guide ;" but 
the race is by no means extinct, though the individual be more 
rarely met with ; and, be it said as their due, they execute their 
office with something more of decency than did their ancient 
predecessors. Modern flattery, like modern oils, is "double 
refined." Let us see if we can trace the course of this refine- 
ment through the Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age. 



206 TiU5LE TEAITS. 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 

The good Archbisliop Fenelon, in liis " Voyage dans Vile des 
Plaisirs,''^ cites some charming examples of the pleasant way in 
which people lived in the Utopian Land of Cocagne, which he 
describes from imagination, and*where the laws were characterized 
by more good sense than distinguishes the legislation of the 
Utopian authorities of More. 

The " Voyage " of Fenelon was probably founded on a fragment 
of Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how 
the citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the golden age 
of its lusty youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth 
of Saturn, who says, " I will tell you what sort of life I vouch- 
safed to men in the early ages of creation. In the first place, 
peace reigned universally, and was as common as the water you 
wash your hands with. Fear and disease were entirely unknown ; 
and the earth provided spontaneously for every human want. 
The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into the valleys ; and 
the cakes disputed with loaves to get into the mouth of man, as 
he walked abroad, supplicating to be eaten, and giving assurances 
of excellent flavour and quality. The tables were covered with 
fish which floated into the kitchens, and courteously put them- 
selves to roast. By the sides of the couches rolled streams of 
sauces, bearing with them joints of ready-roasted meat ; while 
rivulets full of ragouts were near the guests, who dipped in, and 
took therefrom, according to their fancy. Every one could eat of 
what he pleased ; and all that he ate was sweet and succulent. 
. There were countless pomegranate-seeds for seasoning ; little pates 
and grives, done to a turn, insinuated themselves into the mouths 
of the banqueters ; and tarts got smashed in trying to force their 
way into the throat. The children played with sow-paps and 
other delicacies as they would with toys ; and the men were 
gigantic in height, and obese in figure." 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA A2^D THE GOLDEiq' AGE. 



207 



The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that delici- 



' Land of Cocagne, 



That Elysium of all that is friand and nice, 
Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain, 
And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice. 

It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond of 
dealing as Teleclides and others of the tuneful children of song, 
in the early period when young Time counted his birth-days by 
the sun. It has been well treated by Beranger, who thus des- 
cribes, through my imperfect translation, his own impressions of 



A JOURXET TO TEE LAND OF COCAGXE. 



Ho, friends, every one ! 
Let us up, and be gone ; — 
To where care is not known, 

Let us hasten away ; 
Yes ; fired with champagne, 
I reel o'er the plain, 
And see dear Cocagne 

In its sunny array. 

! land full of glee,— 
Here long may I be, 
And laugh merrilie 

At Fate's changeable way. 
For here — what a treat ! — 
I may love, drink, and eat. 
And — this makes it more sweet — 

There is nothing to pay ! 

My appetite 's great. 
And I see the huge gate 
Of a tower of state 

At my elbow, handy : 
. The tower is a pie ; — 
And tall guards, standing by, 
Carry spears ten feet high, 

All in sugar-candy. 



Ah! banquet of fun, 
It will please ev'ry one : 
Look, there is not a gun 

But of sugar is made ! 
See the paintings, how grand 
And the statues, they stand, 
All wrought by the hand 

Out of sweet marmalade. 

Here the people repair 

In gay crowds to the square, 

Where the jests of a fair 

With loud merriment shine ; 
Where the fountains so gay 
Not with water do play. 
But are sparkling away 

With rich, rosy, old wine ! 

Here, the baking's begun ; 
There the baking is done ; — 
See the folks how they run, 

V/ith beef, mutton, and veal. 
And the eaters think fit, 
That the man who lacks wit, 
Shall be made a "turnspit," 

And be bound to the wheel. 



208 



TABLE TRAITS. 



To the palace I haste, 
With two Falstafifs I feast, 
(Twenty stone weighs the least,) 

And with them hob and nob. 
And here, too, I've found. 
Where such good things abound, 
Shy Venus quite round, 

And young Cupid a squab. 

No sadness of brow, 
No pedantic vain show, 
No pompous state-bow, 

Can be ever allow'd : — 
But with feasting and song 
We carry night on. 
Drink deep and drink long 

And toast beauty aloud. 

Now, good-natured lasses. 
To the music of glasses, 
As the sweet dessert passes. 
Let's laugh the time by. 



Let fools sigh and snufiSe, 
And merriment muffle, 
But you, dears, shall ruffle 
Our pro-priety. 

****** 

So, in this joyous way. 
With fresh loves ev'ry day, 
And with no debts to pay, 

We scamper time o'er ; 
While between drinking deep, 
And light visions in sleep. 
Our young years will creep 

To a hundred or more. 

Yes, dear old Cocagne, 

It 's with thee, — free from pain, — 

But who checks my strain, 

In an accent so shrill ? 
For, while singing, I thought, — 
But, my friends, we are caught — 
'T is the waiter who 's brought 

His confounded long bill. 



The fairy land of Cocagne is said to derive its name 
from the Latin coquere " to cook." Duchat says, that its flocks 
and herds present themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks 
descend from the skies ready roasted. For it is there alone — 

" Where so ready all nature its cookery yields, 
Maccaroni au Parmesan grows in the fields ; 
Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint. 
And the geese are all born with a liver complaint." 

The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an 
imaginary view of society in another extreme. The learned Chan- 
cellor, amid much invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the 
citizens of Amaurat after the fashion of those of Crete and Lace- 
daemonia, especially with regard to their common halls for their 
repasts, — a fashion, by the way, which was partially followed in 
the club-rooms of Attica, Others of the author's ideas have been 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEiT AGE. 209 

realized since lie wrote ; and, in this respect, his Utopia may be 
said to have done good service ; but there is a woful residue of non- 
sense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful. 

Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing pro- 
vision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread, fowl, 
and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural slaugh- 
ter-houses, well furnished with running water, for washing away 
the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom "was 
a peculiar institution " of this happy republic,) the free citizens 
not being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden 
their singularly tender characters. " In every street," we are told 
by the author, " there are great halls that lie at an equal distance 
from one another, and are marked by ]3eculiar names. The Sjrpho- 
grants dwell in those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying 
on one side of it, and as many on the other. In these they do all 
meet and eat. The stewards of every one of them come to the 
market-place at an appointed hour, and, according to the number 
of those that belong to their hall, they carry home provisions. 

But they take more care of their sick than of any others After 

the steward of the hospitals has taken for them whatever the phy- 
sician does prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the best 
things that remain are distributed equally among the halls, in pro- 
jDortion to their numbers ; only, in the first place, they serve the 
Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors, and 
strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and 
for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed, 
when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and sup- 
per, the Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, 
meets and eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, 
or lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is 
hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place, for they 
know none does that but for some good reason ; for, though any 
that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is 
both an indecent and foolish thing for any to give themselves the 
trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much 



210 TABLE TSAITS. 

more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All the 
uneasy and sordid services about these halls are done by their 
slaves ; but the dressing, and cooking of their meat, and ordering 
of their tables, belong only to the women, which goes round all 
the women of every family by turns. They sit at three or more 
tables, according to their numbers ; the men sit towards the wall, 
and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall sud- 
denly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she 
may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses' room, 
who are there with the suckling children, where there is always 
fire and clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may 
lay the young children," &c. But, to return from this public 
nursery to the public dining-hall, " all the children under five years 
of age dined with the nurses : the rest of the younger sort of both 
sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do eitlier serve those that sit 
at table ; or, if they are not strong enough for that, they stand by 
them in great silence, and eat that which is given them by those 
that sit at table, nor have they any other formality of dining." 
The whole formality was bad enough, and that last-mentioned v^as 
a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the personal arrange- 
ments at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests stood much 
upon their order of precedence : the Syphogrant and his wife, the 
gnadige Frau Syphograntinn^ presided at the centre of the cross 
table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and 
their mates, came the Priests and their ladies, — for More placed 
the Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy 
was not to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and 
gay were placed, betv/een flanking companies of the aged and 
grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve their manners; and this 
Spartan custom was occasionally imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit 
the Athenians looked with something like contempt upon the 
institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes were placed before 
the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty bits to the young, 
if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if not, they 
took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave. 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 211 

or were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to 
tliem. 

During this delectable process, the young could not have 
offended by their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by con- 
versation, seeing that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by 
reading aloud an Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same 
ofBce performed at some of their meals by learned slaves. More 
expressly says that the Utopian lecture was so short, that it was 
neither tedious nor uneasy to those that heard it ; and that after 
it, the elders not only wagged their beards by " pleasant enlarge- 
ments," but encouraged the young to follow them in the same 
track. This must have been after the supper, when it was the law 
of Utopia, not to " run a mile," but to " rest awhile." The din- 
ners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, v>^hile 
the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This 
must have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. 
The only pleasant feature in More's Utopian banquets is, that 
wherein he says that there was always rnusic at supper, and fruit 
serv^ed up after meat, (which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the 
digestive powers,) and that as the repast proceeded, " some burn 
perfumes, and sprinkle about sweet ointments, and sweet waters ; 
and they are wanting in nothing that may cheer up their spirits ; 
for they give themselves a large allowance in that way, and indulge 
themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no incon- 
venience. Thus," he adds, "do they that are in towns eat 
together ; but in the country, where they live at a greater distance, 
every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary sort 
of provision ; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to them 
that live in the towns." 

I have noticed above the slave-readers at Eoman diners. These 
were seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks 
or Romans, the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably 
imagined. Those who became authors or teachers, were the dis- 
tinguished and illustrious of their class ; and it was they who 
relieved the tedium of a Roman repast by reading livelier sallies 



212 TABLE TRAITS. 

than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians. If their rank in 
humanity was low, their ability secured for them many privileges 
which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading 
slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, 
the witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, 
was a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, 
but a Negro slave, ^sop the fabulist, Phsedrus, his imitator, and 
the Moral philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was 
as low in condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his 
character of teacher of mankind, was the slave of one vfho had 
been a slave, — a depth of degradation than which there can be 
none deeper. But his mission was a great one ; for he appears to 
have been an instrument employed to prepare men's minds for a 
change from the vices of Paganism to the virtues of Christianity. 
His writings are as stepping-stones across the dark and rapid 
stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably calculated 
to enable men to go forward ; not only to induce them to make 
the first step out of infidelity ; but having made it, rather to make 
a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in 
the direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline 
Jove. 

From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the 
next condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteris- 
tically paid their addresses to poetry ; — and they were the " lions " 
at the dinners and assemblies of Kome. Such was Horace, who, 
if he were not in want, was of inferior descent, his father having 
been a slave, and subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax- 
gatherer. Virgil was of equally mean descent on the paternal 
side ; but he derived some portion of nobility from his mother. 
Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet, — a condition that could 
draw upon it only a serfs contempt, — but he was, moreover, an 
exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he was poor, 
angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and satirical 
in prose. 

If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the same with 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEIT AGE. 213 

the philosophers. The proudest walks of philosophy were trodden 
by Demosthenes, the blacksmith. Socrates was the ill-featured, 
but original-minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was 
only rich in a valueless boast of being descended from Ajax ; and 
Isocrates, whose father manufactured the musical ancestry from 
which are descended the modern families of piano-forte and fiddle, 

was also one of the immortal race of intellectual giants Of 

other writers we may remark, that Quintus Curtius, whose "Alex- 
ander the Great " is the first historical romance that ever was 
written, and contains the best description of a Babylonian banquet 
that ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble family. Celsus 
w^as, at least, not a Roman citizen, though resident at Rome ; and 
Plutarch was just " respectable," and nothing more ; — though to 
be worthy of respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man 
need sigh for. 

But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters who made 
Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the slave and his cousin 
the beggar ; wealth was by no means a synonymous term for either 
sloth or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, who believed noth- 
ing ; the two Plinies, the soul of one of whom, " with a difierence," 
entered into Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave 
Zozimus, as Walpole does of his favourite servants ; the tender and 
chivalrous TibuUus, — a Latin Sir Philip Sidney : the profligate 
Sophocles ; JEschylus, the bottle-drainer ; and the lofty Euripides : 
all these mounted Pegasus with golden spurs, and gave glorious 
dinners to guests with whom they could contend in the battle of 
brains. Some, like Martial, got their mouths filled with the sugar- 
candy of imperial recompense. Caesar, the Commentator, was the 
descendant of the Sabine Kings, and the founder of an empire. 
In Plato we see the double condition of aristocrat and slave. 
From the latter condition he was rescued by his noble friends at 
the cost of ^three thousand drachmas ; more fortunate in this than 
Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, and 
teach his master's sons to love virtue and liberty. 

And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of a more 



214 



TABLE TKAITS. 



modern philosopher, who did not lack reverence for him, — I mean 
Bacon, — and Bacon naturally brings me from my digression to the 
subject of " Table Traits " in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, 
in his " JSTew Atlantis," is even more felicitous than More, both in 
the framing of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a moral. 
The table laws spoken of in Solomon's house, have more of a jolly 
aspect than those drawn by Sir Thomas More. For .instance, " I 
will not hold you long with recounting of our brewhouses, bake- 
houses, and kitchens, where are made divers drinks, breads, and 
meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes, and 
drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots ; and of 
mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and decocted ; 
also of the tears and wounding of trees, and of the pulp of canes : 
and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least of 
forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or 
roots, and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof 
some of the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink 
both. So that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them 
with little or no meat or bread ; and, above all, we strive to have 
drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet 
without all biting sharpness, or fretting ; insomuch as some of 
them put upon the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass 
through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have 
also waters which we ripen in that fashion as they become nourish- 
ing, so that they are, indeed, excellent drink, and many will use 
no other. Breads we have of several grains, roots, and kernels, 
yea, and some of flesh and fish drink, with divers kinds of leaven- 
ings and seasonings, so that some do extremely move appetites ; 
some do nourish so as divers do live of them without any other 
meat, who live very long. So, for meats, we have some of them 
so beaten and made tender and mortified, yet without all corrupt- 
ing, as a weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good 
chylus, as well as a sti'ong heat would meat otherwise prepared. 
We have some meats, also, and breads and drinks which, taken by 
some, enable them to fast long after ; and some other that will 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 215 

make the very flesh of men's bodies sensibly more hard and tough, 
and their strength far greater than other^^ase it would be." 

In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not with much 
attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before I conclude this 
section, I may notice a more graceful fiction touching banquets, 
than any thing to be met with among the philosophers. The 
inhabitants of the coast of Malabar believe that the double cocoas 
of the Moluccas, annually thrown on their shore by the waves, 
and joyfully welcomed by the expecting inhabitants, are the 
produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless recesses of the 
ocean ; and that they arise from among coral-groves endowed 
with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a detailed account 
of this supposed phaenomenon, and a very pretty illustration of 
the theory of seeds transported by winds and currents, I refer all 
curious enquirers to the " Annals of My Village," by a Lady. In 
the mean time, I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which 
occurs at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar : — 



'Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree, 

In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove, 
Where slumber young sprites, — the gay elves of a sea 

Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above. 
There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave 

Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray, 
And laugh away time with their lovers at eve, 

And sing to those elves of the deep by the way. 



O ! to see them at sunset, when down by the shore 

Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand, 
Like spirits of light shedding softness all o'er 

The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land ! 
There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth, 
Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth, 
Drink the white wine of Kishna ; — while some are at play, 

Flinging glances and handsfull of roses, in showers, 
That their lovers can't tell, as they bend 'neath the fray, 

"Which are falling the fastest, the glances, or flowers. 



216 TABLE TEAITS. 

And then on the sands where these young people meet, 

What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee, 
As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet, 

The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea ! 
There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar's daughters, 
Half play, dip their white, sandai'd feet in the waters, 
To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again, 

As the wave washes over their small anklet bells, 
There are some, youths and maidens, who, link'd in a chain, 

Like pearls strung, and mixed, here and there, with sea-shells, 
Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm, 

Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out ; 
Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm 

With laughter and splashing the waters about. 

O, who would not like to pass summer away 
Amid scenes such as this ? O, who would not love 

With Malabar's daughters, at twilight, to play, 
And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove ?" 

The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind that used 
to afford holidays and banquetings to the people of the East, that 
is, according to the poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as 
the natives unmusically call it, " lanka dtoipa^'' was, in the olden 
time of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the 
banquet it afforded was not of annual occurrence ; for the tree 
never flowers till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after 
producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy used to bestow the rich 
gift of some of its blossoms on the favoured fair one whose head 
rested on the bosom of the Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted 
the bowl to his painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, 
not such a present as Demetrius Poliocretes made to Lamia, after 
that accomplished courtezan had erected at Sicyon a portico so 
superb, that Polemo wrote a book to describe it ; and poem and 
portico became the table-talk of all Greece. The gift of Demetrius 
was a magnificent purse, containing two hundred and fifty talents, 
which by the way, he had compelled the reluctant Athenians to contri- 
bute ; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was merely " for 



THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE. 217 

soap." The extravagant lady spent it all in one single, but con- 
suming, feast ! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that courtezan, 
Lesena, whose wit made guests forget that the feast was frugal ; 
and to whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a 
tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out her 
own, that torture might not make her betray the accomplices of 
her protector Harmodius, in the murder of her tyrant Hippar- 

chus ! 

We have not found much of the refinement we looked for in 
these remote periods and banquets. Let us see what may be discov- 
ered in the Table Traits of England in Early Times. 



10 



218 TABLE TEAITS. 



TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. 

When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal 
inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he 
described the island as being thickly inhabited, ruled by many 
Kings and Princes, and all living peaceably together, — though 
with war-chariots and strong arms, to settle quarrels when they 
occurred. But if our ancestors lived peaceably among themselves, 
they can hardly be said to have lived comfortably. Their habita- 
tions were of reed, or of wood ; and they gathered in the harvest 
by cutting oft the ears of corn. These ears they gathered in sub- 
terranean repositories, wherefrom they daily culled the ripest 
grain ; and, rudely dressing the same, had thence their susten- 
ance. Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far removed 
from the cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world ; and 
other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, who are 
said to have fed on human flesh, to have had enormous appetites 
for such food, and to have been given to the nasty habit of devour- 
ing their deceased fathers ; but it is not uncommon for others, as 
well as for Irish sons, to devour, at least, their parents' substance, 
even at the present day. The food of an Irish child was certainly 
illustrative of character, — we should rather say that the solemnity 
of offering the first food to a child was characteristic. Caius 
Julius Solinus, a writer of the first century, says, that " when a 
Hibernian mother gives birth to a male child, she puts its first food 
on the point of her husband's sword, and lightly inserts this foretaste 
of meat into the mouth of the infant, on its very tip ; and, by 
family vows, desires that it may never die but under arms." In 
other words, the relations wished that the little stranger might 
never be in want of a row, when disposed to distinguish the family 
name ! 

In the days of Julius Caesar, our stalwart sires supported their 
thews and sinews on milk and flesh, — the diet of a pugilist. We 



TABLE TEATTS OF ENG-LAND IN" EARLY TIMES. 219 

see how mucli progress was made by the time of Constantine, — 
the Constantine that was crowned in Britain, — " when," says a 
contemporaiy writer, " the harvests sufficed alike for the gifts of 
Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures were covered with innumer- 
able multitudes of tame flocks, distended with milk, or laden with 
fleeces." 

I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather poetical 
accounts of certain early writers, that our aboriginal ancestry were 
very little superior to the Few Zealanders. They were, perhaps, 
more uncivilized, and quite as ignorant ; and their abstinence from 
the flesh of hares and poultry, and, in the northern parts of the 
island, from fish, bespeaks a race who lacked, at once, industry and 
knowledge. Indeed, it is by no means certain, that we do not 
wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their possible inferiority 
to the Britons, seeing that the latter are very strongly suspected 
of being guilty of the most revolting cannibalism. 

They were clever enough to brew mead and ale ; but wine and 
ci^dlization were brought to them by their enemies, the Romans, — 
invaders whom, for some reasons, they might have welcomed with 
a sentiment akin to the line in Beranger : — 

" Vivent nos amis f nos amis, les ennernisP' 

They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more important 
one. Their seats were skins, or bundles of hay, flung on the 
ground. The table was a lov,^ stool, around which Cabinet Chiefs 
sat, and, even in the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore 
their food with teeth and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched 
knife, as bad as anything of the sort now in common use in Gaul. 
In short, they committed a thousand solecisms, the very idea of 
which is sufficient to make the Sybarites of Belgra\da very much 
ashamed of their descent from the savages of Britain. 

It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which the Anglo- 
Saxons brought with them to England, that they introduced the 
rather vulgar custom of taking four meals a-day. The custom 
was, however, one solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility 



220 TABLE TEAITS. 

of the Saxons. They ate good solid joints of jElesh-meat, boiled, 
baked, or broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks were 
not of such an illustrious guild as that which they subsequently 
formed. A cook among the Anglo-Saxons was little more accounted 
of than the calf he cut up into coUops. The cook, in fact, was a 
slave ; and was as unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in 
the latter's last will and testament, as though the culinary artist 
had been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes sat 
together, — a custom refined in itself, refining in its effects, and of 
such importance, that half-a-dozen nations claim the honour of 
being the inventors of that excellent custom. In Europe, Turkey 
alone has obstinately refused to follow this civilizing example ; 
and Turkey is falling to pieces. It may, therefore, be logically 
proved, that where table rights are not conceded to the ladies, 
nations slowly perish ; and — " serve them right." 

It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths were fea- 
tures at Anglo-Saxon feasts ; but, as the long ends were used in 
place of napkins, the delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, 
if the cloth were made to serve at a second feast. There was a 
rude sort of display upon the board ; but the order of service was 
of a quality that would strike the " Jeameses " of the age of Vic- 
toria with inexpressible disgust. The meat was never " dished," 
and " covers " were as yet unknown. The attendants brought the 
viands into the dining hall on the spits, knelt to each guest, pre- 
sented the spit to his consideration ; and, the guest having helped 
himself, the attendant went through the' same ceremony with the 
next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these same ceremonies ; 
and even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins of glut- 
tony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the 
Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was in gen- 
eral use. Water, for hands and feet, was brought to every stranger 
on entering a house wherein he was about to tarry and feed ; and, 
it is said that one of the severest penances of the Church was the 
temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting the hair and nails. 

With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased dis- 



TABLE TEAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. 221 

comfort. They neither knew nor tolerated the use of table-cloths 
or plain steel forks ; but their bill of fare showed more variety and 
costliness than the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an 
improvement on that of their predecessors in the island, that Nor- 
man French, and ISTorman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table 
into the annihilating position of "vulgarity." The art was so 
much esteemed, that Monarchs even granted estates, on condition 
that the holder thereof should, through his cook, prepare a certain 
dish at stated periods, and set it before the King. It was under 
the Normans that the boar's head had regal honours paid it ; and 
its progress from the kitchen to the banquet was under escort of a 
guard, and behind the deafening salutes of puffy-cheeked trum- 
peters. The crane was then what the goose is now, — ^highly 
esteemed ; yet labouring under the shadow of a suspicion of being 
" common." The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail 
and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage was of a 
very bilious character, — spicy and cordialed ; namely, hippocras, 
piment, morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes par- 
took of a more choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and 
ale. The Norman maxim for good living and plenty of it, was to 
" rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, and bed at nine, if you'd 
live to a hundred all but one." Dinner at nine is, however, a 
contradiction of terms ; for dinner, as I have said, is the abbrevia- 
tion of dixihne heure, or "ten o'clock," the time at which all 
people sat down to a solid repast in the days of the first Williams. 
In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings launched into 
far greater magnificence than had ever, hitherto, been seen in 
England. Richard II. entertained ten thousand guests daily at his 
numerous tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, 
grandson of the equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent 
twenty-two thousand pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. 
His thirsty household retainers drank no less than three hundred 
and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space of time. At 
great banquets, the dishes were reckoned by thousands, and Kings 
in vain dictated decrees denouncing such dinners ; for cooks and 



222 TABLE TBAITS. 

convives considered them with contempt. As a show of modera- 
tion, the old four meals a-day were now reduced to two ; but these 
two were connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats and 
refections, that the board was spread all day long, and g-uests were 
never weary : — 

" Their life like the life of the Germans would be, 
Du lit a la table ; de la table au lit.^' 

To have things " brennying like wild-fire," was the characteristic 
of the cookery of that period. Confectionery of the richest sorjis 
were the lighter materials of meals, which were abundantly irri- 
gated by hippocras, piment, or claret, or the simpler and purer 
wines of France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say : — 

" Ye shall have rumney and malespiae, 
Both ypocrasse and vernage wine ; 
Mountrasse and wyne of Greke, 
Both algrade and despice eke, 
Antioche and bastarde, 
Pyment also and garnarde, 
Wyne of Greke and muscadell, 
Both clary, pyment, and Rochelle." 

Ricobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300^ of the 
Italian social condition in the age of Frederick II., illustrates the 
former rudeness of the Italian manners, by showing that in those 
days " a man and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no 
wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups 
in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown ; a servant 
held a torch during supper. The clothes of men were of leather 
unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress. 
The common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept 
their oold meat for su]3per. Many did not drink wine in summer. 
A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women 
were small ; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The 
pride of m^en was to be well provided with arms and horses ; that 
of the nobility to have lofty towers, of which all the cities in 



TABLE TEAITS OF ENGLAND IN EAKLY TIMES. 223 

Italy were full. But now, frugality has been changed for sump- 
tuousness ; every thing exquisite is sought after in dress, — gold, 
silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs." 

The Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland admirably 
illustrates the interior and table life of the greater nobles of the 
period of Henry VII. In this well-known and well-kept record, 
the family is described as consisting of one hundred and sixty-six 
persons, masters and servants; and hospitable reckoning is 
allowed for more than half a hundred strangers who are expected 
daily to partake of the Earl's good cheer. The cost for each 
individual, for board and fuel, is settled at twopence halfpenny 
daily, about one and sixpence of our present money, if we take 
into account the relative value of money, and the relative prices 
of provisions. The Earl allots for his annual expenditure 
£11'78. l^s. 8d. More than two-thirds of this is consumed in 
meat, drink, and firing; namely, £191. lis. 2d. The book care- 
fully states the number of pieces which the carver is to cut out of 
each quarter of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stock-fish and 
salmon ; and supervising clerks were apppointed to see that this 
was carried into efiect, and to make due entry of the same in 
their registers. An absent servant's share is to be accounted for, 
and not to be divided amongst the rest. The absentee, if he be 
on " my Lord's " business, received 8d. per day, board wages, in 
winter, and 5d. in summer ; with 2c?. additional daily for the keep 
of a horse. A little more than a quarter of wheat, estimated at 
5s. 8d. per quarter, is allowed for every month throughout the 
year; with this, 250 quarters of malt, at 45. (two hogsheads to 
the quarter,) and producing about a bottle and a third of inter- 
mediate beer to each person, does not say much for the liberality 
of the Lord, though it may for the temperance of his retainers. 
One hundred and nine fat beeves are to be bought at All-Hallow's 
Tide, at 135. 4c?. each; a couple of dozen of lean kine, at 85. are 
to be bought at St. Helen's, to be fattened for service between 
Midsummer and Michaelmas. All the rest of the year, nine 
weary months, the family was on salted provisions, to aid the 



224 TABLE TEAITS. 

digestion of whicli, the Earl, so chary of his liquor, allows the 
profuse aid of one hundred and sixty-six gallons of mustard. 647 
sheep at Is. Sd., to be eaten salted between Lammas and Michael- 
mas; 25 hogs at 25., 28 calves at Is. 8c?., 40 lambs at 10c?. or Is., 
— are other articles which seem to have been reserved rather for 
the upper table than for the servants, whose chief fare was salted 
beef, without vegetables, but with mustard a discretion ! There 
was great scarcity of linen, and the little there was, except that 
for the chapel, not often washed. No mention is made of sheets ; 
and though " my Lord's " table had eight " table-cloths " for the 
year, that of the Knights had but one, and probably went 
uncovered while the cloth was " at the wash." If the ale was 
limited, the wine appears to have been more liberally dispensed ; 
and ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gascony wine, at £4. 135. 4c?. 
per tun, show the bent of the Earl's taste. Ninety-one dozens of 
candles for the year, and no fires after Lady-Day, except half-fires 
in the great room and the nursery ; twenty-four fires, with a peck 
of coals daily for each, (for the offices,) and eighty chaldrons of 
coals, at 45. 10c?., with sixty-four loads of wood, at l5. a load, — 
are the pro^dsions made for lighting and firing. It must have 
been cold work to live in the noble Earl's house in Yorkshire, 
from Lady -Day till the warm summer came ; which advent is 
sometimes put ofi" till next year. The family rose at six, or 
before ; for Mass was especially ordered at that hour, in order to 
force the household to rise early. The dinner-hour was ten a.m. ; 
four P.M. was the hour for supper ; and at nine the bell rang for 
bed. I have omitted the breakfast, which took place at seven, 
after Mass ; when my Lord and Lady sat down to a repast of two 
pieces of salt-fish, and half-a-dozen red herrings, with four fresh 
ones, or a dish of sprats, and a quart of beer, and the same mea- 
sure of wine. This was on meagre days. At other seasons, half 
a chine of mutton, or of boiled beef, graced the board of the 
delicate Earl and Countess, who sometimes forgot that they had 
to dine at ten. Capons, at 2c?. each, were only on the Lord's 
table, and plovers, at a penny, (at Christmas,) were deemed too 



TABLE TKAITS OF ENGLAND IN EAKLY TIMES. 225 

good for any digestion tliat was not carried on in a " noble " 
stomach. Game generally is specified, but without intimation as 
to limit of the board. No doubt the fragments were not rejected 
at the servants' table ; but much certainly went in doles at the 
gate. My Lord maintained between twenty and thirt}^ horses for 
his own use. His mounted servants found their own ; but their 
keep was at the noble master's cost. Of mounted servants, not 
less than three dozen attended their Lord on a journey; and 
when this journey was for change of residence from one mansion 
to another, the illustrious Percy carried with him bed and bed- 
ding, household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen utensils 
generally. The baggage waggon bore these impedimenta; and 
before and behind them went chiefs and serving men, including in 
the array eleven Priests, — two hundred and twenty-three persons 
in all, — and only two cooks to look after their material happiness ! 
No notice is taken of plate ; but the " hiring of pewter vessels " is 
mentioned ; and with these rough elements did the Earl construct 
his imperfect social system, so far taking care for his soul as well 
as his body, inasmuch as that he contributed a groat a year to the 
shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, and the same magnificent 
sum to the holy blood at Hales, on the express condition of the 
interest of the Virgin for the promotion of the future welfare of 
the Earl in heaven. Such is an outline of a nobleman's house- 
hold in the good old days of Henry YH. 

In the reign of the same King, fish was a scarce article, and 
for a singular reason ; namely, people destroyed them at an 
unlawful season, for the purj^ose of feeding their pigs or manuring 
the ground. The favourite wine at table was Malmsey : it came 
from Candy ; and there was a legal restriction against its costing 
more than four pounds per butt. In this reign our cooks wrought 
at fires made with wood imported from Gascony and Languedoc, 
whence also much wine was brought, but, by law, only in English 
bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir William Stanley, 
into whose hands fell nearly all the spoil of Bosworth Field ; and 
10'^ 



226 TABLE TEAITS. 

therewith he maintained a far more princely house and table than 
his master. 

In Pegge's " Cury " there is an account of the rolls of provi- 
sions with their prices, in the time of Henry YIII. ; and we find 
that, at the dinner given at the marriage of Gervase Clifton and 
Mary l!^evile, the price of three hogsheads of wine (one white, one 
red, one claret) was set down at £5. 55. 

The dining-rooms — and, indeed, these were the common IWmg 
rooms in the greatest houses — were still uncomfortable places. 
The walls were of stone, partially concealed by tapestry hung upon 
timber hooks, and taken down whenever the family removed, 
(leaving bare the stone walls,) lest the damp should rot it. It was 
a fashion that had lasted for centuries ; but it began to disappear 
when mansions ceased to be fortresses. The tapestry, it may be 
observed, v/as suspended on a wooden frame projecting from the 
wall, between which and the hangings there was a passage wide 
enough to kill a man, as Hamlet did Polonius, " behind the arras." 
It was not till the reign of Charles I. that houses were built with 
under-ground rooms ; the pantry, cellars, kitchens, and store-rooms 
were, previous to this reign, all on the ground-floor ; and the oflS- 
cials presiding in each took there, respectively, their solemn post 
on great days of state-dinners. There were certain days when 
the contents of these several offices, meat and drink, were bounti- 
fully supplied to every applicant. To revert to tapestry : we see 
the time of its change, in the speech of Falstaff, who wishes his 
hostess to sell her tapestry, and adopt the cheaper painted canvas 
which came from Holland. 

At this time, and, indeed, long after, our English yeomanry and 
tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a 
generous diet, than to dwell in well-furnished houses, or to find 
comfort in cleanliness and elegance. " These English," said the 
Spaniards who came over with Philip II., "have their houses 
made of sticks and dirt ; but they fare commonly as well as the 
Kinff." 



TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. 227 

Previous to tlie age of Elizabeth, even the Monarch, well as he 
might fare, and gloriously as he shone in pageants, v^as but simply 
lodged. The furnitui*e of the bed-room of Henry VIII. was one of 
the very simplest ; and the magnificent "Wolsey was content with 
deal for the material of most of the furniture of his palace. But 
the community generally was, from this period, both boarded and 
bedded more comfortably and refinedly than before. The hours 
for meals were eight, noon, and six ; but " after-meats," and " after- 
suppers," filled up the intervals. It was chiefly at the " after- 
supper " that wine was used. The dinner, however, had become 
the principal meal of the day. It was abundant ; but the jester 
and harper were no longer tolerated at it, with their lively sauce 
of mirth and music. It was the fashion to be sad, and ceremo- 
nious dinners were celebrated in stately silence, or a dignified 
sotto voce. Each guest took his place according to a properly 
marshalled order of precedence ; and before sitting down to din- 
ner, they washed with rose-water and perfumes, like the parochial 
boards of half a century ago, who used also to deduct the expenses 
of both dinners and rose-water from the rates levied for the relief 
of the poor ; this, too, at a time when men who were not parish 
authorities were being hanged for stealing to the amount of a few 
shillings. 

By the reign of Elizabeth, napkins had been added to table- 
cloths. The wealthy ate the manchet, or fine wheaten bread ; the 
middle classes were content with a bread of a coarser quality 
called " chete ;" and the ravelled, brown, or maslin bread was con- 
sumed by those who could afi'ord to procure no better. There 
was a passion for strong wines at this time. Of this France sent 
more than half a hundred different sorts, and thirty-six various 
kind*s were imported from other parts of Europe. About 30,000 
tuns were imported yearly, exclusive of what the nobility imported 
free of duty. The compound wines were in great request ; and 
ladies did not disdain to put their lips to distilled liquors, such as 
rosa-solis and aqua-vitce. Ale was brewed stronger than these 
distillations : and our ancestors drank thereof to an extent that is 



228 TABLE TEAITS. 

terrific only to think of. Camden ascribes the prevailing drunk- 
enness to the long wars in the Netherlands, previous to which, we 
had been held, " of all the northern nations, the most commended 
for sobriety." The barbarous terms formerly used in drinking 
matches, are all of Dutch, German, or Danish origin, and this 
serves to confirm Camden's assertion. The statutes passed to cor- 
rect the evil were disregarded. James I. was particularly desirous 
to enforce these statutes ; but his chief difficulty lay in the fact, 
that he was the first to infringe them. 

In Elizabeth's reign the " watching candles " of Alfred (to mark 
the time) were in use in many houses. This is a curious trait in 
in-door life. We have an " exterior " one, in the fact that the 
Vicar of Hurley, who served Maidenhead, had an addition of sti- 
pend on account of the danger he ran, in crossing the thicket, 
when he passed to or from the church — and his inn. It was not 
a delicate period, and if caraways always appeared at desert, 
every one knew that they were there for the kind purpose of cur- 
ing expected flatulence in the guests. 

In James the First's reign, the fashion of Malmsey had passed 
away, and the Hungarian red wine [Ofener) had taken its 
place. It came by Breslau to Hamburg, where it was shipped 
to England. It is a strong wine, and bears some resemblance to 
port. 

In country-houses in the seventeenth century, the Knight or 
Squire was head of a ho^st of retainers, three-fourths of whom 
consumed the substance of the master on whose estate they were 
born, without rendering him much other service than drink- 
ing his ale, eating his beef, and wearing his livery. Brief family 
prayers, and heavy family breakfasts, a run with the hounds^ and 
an early dinner, followed by long and heavy drinking, till supper- 
time, when more feeding and imbibing went on until each man 
finished his posset, or carried it with him to bed, — such was the 
ordinary course : but it admitted of exceptions where the master 
was a man of intellect, and then the country-house was a temple 
of hospitality rather than of riot; and good sense and ripe 



TABLE TEAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. 229 

^Yit took the place of the sensuality, obscurity, and ignorance 
that distinguished the boards where the Squire was simply a 
"brute." 

Of the table traits of this century, the best examples are to be 
found in Pepys and Ev^elyn. In the Diary of the former, may be 
seen what a jolly tavern life could be led by a grave official, and 
no scandal given. Evelyn takes us into better company. We 
find him at the Spanish Ambassador's, when his Excellency, by 
way of dessert, endeavoured to convert him to the Roman Catho- 
lic Church. "We go with him to the feast where the Envoy from 
the Emperor of Morocco figured as so civilized a gentleman, 
while the representative of the Czar of Muscovy comported him- 
self like a rude clown ; and we dine with him at Lady Sunder- 
land's, where the noble hostess had engaged for the amusement 
of the guests, a man who swallowed stones, and who not only 
performed the feat in the presence of the company, but comnnced 
them there was no cheat, by making the stones rattle in his 
stomach. But, nous avons change tout cela^ and not only changed 
in taste but improved in manners. 

Pepys gives a curious account of a Lord Mayor's dinner in 1663. 
It vf as served in the Guildliall, at one o'clock in the day. A bill 
of fare was placed with every salt-cellar, and at the end of each 
table was a list of "the persons proper" there to be seated. 
Here is a mixture of abundance and barbarism. " Many were the 
tables, but none in the hall, but the Mayor's and the Lords' of the 
Privy Council, that had napMns or knives^ which was very strange. 
I sat at the merchant-strangers' table, where ten good dishes to a 
mess, with plenty of wine of all sorts ; but it was very unpleasing 
that we had no napkins, nor change of trenchers, and drank out 
of earthen pitchers and wooden dishes. The dinner, it seems, is 
made by the Mayor and two Sheriffs for the time being, and the 
whole is reckoned to come to ^700 or £800 at most," Pepys 
took his spoon" and fork with him, as was the custom of those 
days with guests invited to great entertainments. " Forks " came 
in with Tom Coryat, in the reign of James I. ; but they were not 



230 TABLE TRAITS. 

" familiar " till after the Restoration. The " laying of napkins," as 
it was called, was a profession of itself. Pej^ys mentions, the day 
before one of his dinner-parties, that he went home, and " there 
found one laying of my napkins against to-morrow, in figm*es of 
all sorts, which is mighty pretty, and, it seems, is his trade, and 
he gets much money by it." The age of Pepys, we may further 
notice, was the great " supping age." Pepys himself supped hear- 
tily on venison pasty ; but his occasional " next-morning " remark 
was like that of Scrub : " My head aches consumedly !" The 
dashing Duchess of Cleveland supped off such substantial as 
roast chine of beef; much more solid fare than that of the 
Squires in a succeeding reign, who were content, with Sir Roger 
de Coverley, to wind up the day with "good Cheshire cheese, 
best mustard, a golden pippin, and a pipe of John Sly's best." 

A few years earlier. Laud had leisure to write anxiously to 
Strafford on the subject of Ulster eels. " Your Ulster eels are the 
fattest and fairest that ever I saw, and it's a thousand pities there 
should be any error in their salting, or any thing else about 
them ; for how the carriage should hurt them I do not see, con- 
sidering that other salted eels are brought as far, and retain their 
goodness ; but the dried fish was exceeding good." There was a 
good deal of error in the preserving of other things besides eels, if 
Laud had only known as much. 

It may be mentioned as something of a " Table Trait," illustra- 
ting the popular appetite in the reign of Charles II., that he sent 
sea stores to the people encamped in Moorfields ; but they were 
so well provisioned by the liberality of the nation, that they 
turned up their noses at the King's biscuits, and sent them back, 
"not having been used to the same." There was some ungrateful 
impertinence in this ; but there was less meanness in it than was 
shown by the great ladies of Queen Anne's reign, who were 
curious in old china, and who indulged their passion by " swopping " 
their old clothes for fragile cups and saucers, instead of giving the 
former to the poor. 

Dry den speaks, in the Preface to his " Love Triumphant," of a 



TABLE TKAIT3 OF EXGLAlfD IN EAELY TIMES. 231 

remarkable trait of tlie time of William III. "It is tlie usual 
practice," lie says, " of our decayed gentry, to look about tliem 
for some illustrious family, and then endeavour to fix their young- 
darling, Avliere lie may be both well educated and supported. 

Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George the First's . 
reign. "In latter days," he says, "it has become the fashion 
to eat with less ceremony and method. Every one chooses to 
carve for himself. The learned manner of dissection is out of 
request ; and a certain method of cookery has been introduced, 
by which the anatomical science of the table is entirely set aside. 
Hagouts and fricassees are the reigning dishes, in which every 
thing is so dismembered, and thrown out of all order and form, 
that no part of the mess can properly be divided or distinguished 
from another." But we have come to a period that demands a 
chapter to itself; and even with that implied space, we can 
hardly do justice to the Table Traits of the Last Century. 



232 TABLE TEAITS. 



TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 

When Mr. Chute intimated to Horace Walpole that his " tempe- 
rance diet and milk " had rendered him stupid, Walpole protested 
pleasantly against such an idea. " I have such lamentable proofs," 
he says, " every day, of the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and 
wine, that I have contracted a most religious veneration for your 
spiritual nouriture. Only imagine that I here, (Houghton,) every 
day, see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just 
roughly hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the giant 
rock at Pratolino ! I shudder when I see them brandish their 
knives, in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour 
one another. I should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder 
Alderman, at the end of the table, was to stick his fork into his jolly 
neighbour's cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown and fat. Why, 
I'll swear I see no difference between a country gentleman and a 
sirloin : whenever the first laughs, or the latter is cut, there run 
out just the same streams of gravy ! Indeed, the sirloin does not 
ask quite so many questions. I have an aunt here, a family j)iece 
of goods, an old remnant of inquisitive hospitality and economy, who 
to all intents and purposes, is as beefy as her neighbours." 

Certainly, I think it may be considered that, in diet and ii, 
principles, we have improved upon the fashion of one hundred 
and ten years ago ;— and, perhaps, the improvement in principles is 
a consequence of that in diet. There was a profound meaning in 
the point of faith of some old religionists, that the stomach was 
the seat of the soul. However this may be, the " beefy " men of 
Walpole's time had, occasionally, strange ideas touching honour. 
Old Nourse, for instance, challenged Lord Windsor, who refused 
to fight him, either with swords or pistols, on the plea thai 
Nourse was too aged a man. Thereupon, ISTourse, in a fit of vexa - 
tion and indigestion, went home from the coffee-house and cut his 
throat ! " It was strange, yet very English," says Walpole. Old 



TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 233 

I^ourse must have had Japanese blood in him. At Jeddo, when a 
nobleman feels himself slighted, he walks home, takes the sharpest 
knife he can find, and rips himself open, from the umbilicus to the 
trachea ! 

Quite as certainly, strong diet and weak principles prevailed 
among our great-grandsires and their dames. Lady Townshend 
fell in love with the rebel Lord Kilmarnock, from merely seeing 
him at his trial. She forthwith cast off her old lover, Sir Harry 
Nisbett, and became " as yellow as a jonquil " for the new object of 
her versatile affection. She even took a French master, in order 
that she might forget the language of " the bloody English !" 
She was not so afflicted, but that she could bear the company of 
gay George Selwyn to dine with her ; and he, believing that her 
passion was feigned, joked with her, on what was always a favourite 
topic with himself, — the approaching execution. Lady Townshend 
forthwith rushed from the table in rage and tears, and Mr. Selwjii 
finished the bottle with " Mrs. Dorcas, her woman," who begged 
of him to helj) her to a sight of the execution ! Mrs. Dorcas had 
a friend who had promised to protect her, and, added she, " I can 
lie in the Tower the night before !" This is a pretty dining-room 
interior of the last century. As for George Selwyn, that most 
celebrated of the diners-out of a hundred years ago, he said the 
pleasantest thing possible at dessert, after the execution of Lord 
Lovat. Some ladies asked him how he could be such a barbarian 
as to see the head cut off. " Nay," said he, " if that was suchi a 
crime, I am sure I have made amends ; for I went to see it sewed 
on again I" " George," says "Walpole, " never thinks but a la tete 
tranchee ; he came to town t' other day to have a tooth drawn, 
and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the 
signal." 

Selwyn kept his powers bright by keeping good company ; while 
Gray the poet was but indifferent society, from living reclusely, 
added to a natural turn for melancholy, and "a little to much. 
dignity." Young, a greater poet than Gray, was as brilliant in 
conversation as Selwyn himself, as long as, like Selwyn, he polished 



234 TABLE TEAITS. 

his wit by contact with the world. When he dined with Garrick, 
Quin, and George Anne Bellamy, he was the sprightliest of the 
four ; but when he took to realizing* the solitude he had epically 
praised, Young, too, became a proser. Quin loved good living as 
much as he did sparkling conversation ; and Garrick, the other 
guest noticed above, has perfectly delineated Quin the epicure in 
the following epigram, as he subsequently did Quin, the man and 
brother of men, in his epitaph in Bath Abbey : — 

" A plague on Egypt's art ! I say ; 
Embalm the dead, on senseless clay 

Rich wines and spices waste ! 
Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I, 
Bound in a precious pickle, lie, 
Which I shall never taste ? 

" Let me embalm this flesh of mine 
With turtle fat and Bordeaux wine, 

And spoil th' Egyptian trade. 
Than Humphrey's Duke more happy I ; 
Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall die, 
A mummy, ready made." 

A good many female mummies were prepared during the last 
century after a similar receipt. Witness Walpole's neighbour at 
Strawberry Hill, " an attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle. 
By the time she has finished that and daylight, she grows afraid 
of thieves, and makes her servants fire minute-guns out of the 
garret windows. The divine Asheton," he proceeds, "will give 
you an account of the astonishment we were in last night at hear- 
ing guns. I began to think that the Duke (of Cumberland) had 
brought some of his defeats from Flanders." 

Young denounces, in his " Satires," both tea and wine, as abused 
by the fair sex of the last century. In Memmia he paints Lady 
Betty Germain, in the lines I have quoted under the head of " Tea ;" 
and then, hurling his shafts of satire at that which another poet 
has described as " cups which cheer, but not inebriate," he adds, — 



TABLE TKAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 235 

" Tea ! how I tremble at thy fatal stream I 
As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame. 
What devastations on thy banks are seen ! 
What shades of mighty names which once have been ! 
A hecatomb of characters supplies 
Thy painted altar's daily sacrifice. 
Hervey, Pearce, Blount, aspersed by thee, decay, 
As grains of finest sugars melt away. 
And recommend thee more to mortal taste : 
Scandal's the sweetener of a female feast." 

And then adverting to the ladies who, like Walpole's " attorney's 
wife," were much given to the bottle, the poet exclaims, — 

" But this inhuman triumph shall decline, 
And thy revolting Naiads call for wine ; 

• Spirits no longer shall serve under thee, 
But reign in thy own cup, exploded Tea ! 
Citronia's nose declares thy ruin nigh ; 
And who dares give Citronia's nose the lie ? 
The ladies long at men of drink exclaim'd, 
And what impair'd both health and virtue blamed. 
At length, to rescue man, the generous lass 
Stole from her consort the pernicious glass 
As glorious as the British Queen rcnown'd. 
Who suck'd the poison from her husband's wound." 

Manners and morals generally go hand in hand ; but those of 
the ladies satirized by Young were not so bad as those of the 
French Princesses of a few years before, when they and Duchesses 
were so addicted to drinking, that no one thought it a vice, since 
royalty and aristocracy practised it. The Dauphine of Burgundy 
is indeed praised by her biographers as not drinking to any great 
excess during the last three years of her life. But this was excep- 
tional. The Duchess of Bourbon and her daughters drank like 
dragoons ; but the latter were unruly in their cups, whereas the 
old lady carried her liquor discreetly. Henrietta, Madame de 
Montespan, and the Princess di Monaco, were all addicted, more or . 



236 TABLE TEAITS. 

less, to tippling. The Duchess de Bourbon and Her Grace of 
Chartres added smoking to their other boon qualities; and the 
Dauphin once surprised them with pipes which had been cullotes 
for them by common soldiers of the Swiss Guard ! In France? 
devotion even was a means towards drunkenness. Bungener tells 
us, in his " Trois Sermons sous Louis XF.," that Monsieur Basquiat 
de la House owned a small estate in Gascony, which produced a 
wine which no one would buy. Being at Rome, as Secretary of an 
Embassy, he procured a body from the catacombs, which he christ- 
ened by the name of a saint venerated in his part of the country. 
The people received it with great pomp. A fete was appointed by 
the Pope, a fair by the Government, and the wine was sold by 

'hogsheads ! It was a wine as thin as the beverage which Mr. 
Chute lived on when he had the gout, at which time, says Walpole, 
" he keeps himself very low, and lives upon very thin ink." 

There was a good deal of latitude of observation and conversa- 
tion at the dinner-tables of the last century ; and the letter-writer 
I have just cited affords us ample e^ddence of the fact. John Stan- 
hope, of the Admiralty, he informs us, " was sitting by an old Mr. 
Curzon, a nasty wretch, and very covetous ; his nose wanted blow- 
ing, and continued to want it; at last Mr. Stanhope, with the 
greatest good breeding, said, ' Indeed, Sir, if you don't wipe your 
nose, you will lose that drop.' " 

A hundred years ago, Walpole remarked that Methodism, drink- 
ing, and gambling were all on the increase. Of the first he sneer- 
ingly says, " It increases as fast as any religious nonsense did." 
Of the second he remarks, " Drinking is at the highest wine-mark;" 
and he speaks of the third as being so violent, that " at the last 
I^ew-market meeting, in the rapidity of both gaming and drink- 
ing, a bank bill was thrown down, and, nobody immediately claim- 
ing it, they agreed to give it to a man who was standing by !" 

There v/as a love of good eating, as well as of deep drinking, 
even among the upper classes of the last century. What a picture 
of a Duchess is that of her Grace of Queensberry, posting down 

. to Parson's Green, to tell Lady Sophia Thomas " something of 



TABLE TKAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 237 

importance;" namely, "Take a couple of beefsteaks, clap them 
together as if they were for a dumpling, and eat- them ^dth pepper 
and salt : it is the best thing you ever tasted ! I could not help 
coming to tell you this ;" — and then she drove back to town. And 
what a picture of a Magistrate is that of Fielding, seated at supper 
with a blind man, a Drury-Lane Chloris, and three Irishmen, all 
eating cold mutton and ham from one dish, on a very dirty cloth, 
and " his worship " refusing to rise to attend to the administration 
of Justices' justice ! It is but fair, however, to Fielding to add, 
that he might have had better fare had he been more oppressive 
tonching fees. And, besides, great dignitaries set him bnt an 
indifferent example. Gray, speaking of the Duke of l:^ewcastle's 
installation at Oxford, remarks, that " every one was very gay and 
very busy in the morning, and very owlish and tipsy at night. I 
make no exceptions, from the Chancellor to Blewcoat." Lord Pem- 
broke, truly, was temperate enough to live upon vegetables ; but 
the diet did not improve either his temper or his morals. Ladies 
— and they were not over delicate a century ago — as much dreaded 
sitting near him at dinner, as their daughters and grand-daughters 
dreaded to be near the late Duke of Cumberland, who was pretty 
sure to say something in the course of dinner expressly to embar- 
rass them. The vegetarian Lord Pom fret was so blasphemous at 
tennis, that the Primate of Ireland, Dr. George Stone, was com- 
pelled to leave off playing with him. For Primates handled the 
rackets then, as Pope and Cardinals do now the cue. Pio Nono 
and the expertest of the Sacred College play la poule at billiards, 
after dinner, with the view of keeping down the good Pontiff's 
obesity. This is almost as curious a trait as that of Taafe, the 
Irishman, who conceiving himself to have been insulted at dinner, 
and not being then able, as a Roman Catholic, to wear a sword, 
changed his religion, and ran his adversary through the body. 
The confusion of ideas which prompted a man to follow a partic- 
ular faith, in order that he might commit murder, was something 
like that which influenced the poor woman who, suddenly becom- 
ing pious, after hearing a sermon from Rowland Hill, went to a 
book-stall, and stole a Bible. 



238 TABLE TEAITS. 

I have noticed the love of good eating, and the coarseness con- 
nected with it. There was also a coarse economy attendant on it. 
The Duchess of Devonshire would call out to the Duke, when both 
were presiding at supper after one of their assemblies, " Good God, 
Duke ! don't cut the ham ; nobody will eat any ;" and then she 
would relate the circumstances of her private menage to her neigh- 
bour : " When there's only my Lord and I, besides a pudding, w^e 
have always a rich dish of roast,"— no very dainty fare for a ducal 
pair. Indeed, there was much want of daintiness, and of dignity, 
too, in many of those with whom both might have been looked 
for as a possession. Lord Coventry chased his Lady round the 
dinner-table, and scrubbed the paint off her cheeks with a napkin. 
The Duke and Dutchess of Hamilton were more contemptible in 
their pomposity than their Graces of Devonshire were in their 
plainness. At their own house they walked into dinner before 
their company, sat together at the upper end of their own table, 
ate together oflf one plate, and drank to nobody beneath the rank 
of Earl. It was, indeed, a wonder that they could get any one of 
any rank to dine with them at all. But, in point of dinners, 
people are not " nice " even now. Dukes very recently dined with 
a railway potentate, in hopes of profiting by the condescension ; 
and Duchesses heard, without a smile, that potentate's lady superbly 
dismiss them with an " au reservoir /" — an expression, by the way, 
which is refined, when compared with that taught by our nobility, 
a hundred years ago, to the rich Bohemian Countess Chamfelt ; 
namely, " D — n you !" and, " Kiss me !" but it was apologetically 
said of her, that she never used the former, but upon the miscar- 
riage of the latter. This was at a time when vast assemblies were 
followed by vast suppers, vast suppers by vast drinking, and when 
nymphs and swains reached home at dawn with wigs, like Ranger's 
in the comedy, vastly battered, and not very fit to be seen. 

Pope, in the last century, moralized, with efi'ect, on the deaths 
of the dissolute Buckingham and the avaricious Cutler ; and the 
avarice of Sir John was perhaps more detestable than any extrava- 
gance that is satirized by Pope, or witticized by Walpole. But 
Sir John Cutler was ingenious in his thrift. This rich miser, ordi- 



TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 239 

narily travelled on horseback and alone, in order to avoid expense. 
On reaching his inn at night, he feigned indisposition, as an excuse 
for not taking supper. He would simply order the hostler to 
bring a little straw to his room, to put in his boots. He then had 
his bed warmed, and got into it, but only to get out of it again as 
soon as the servant had left the room. Then, with the straw in 
his boots, and the candle at his bed-side, he kindled a little fire, 
at which he toasted a herring which he drew from his pocket. 
This, with a bit of bread which he carried with him, and a little 
water from the jug, enabled the lord of countless thousands to sup 
at moderate cost. 

Well, this sordidness was less culpable perhaps than slightly 
overstepping income by giving assemblies and suppers. At the 
latter there was, at least, wit, and as much of it as was ever to be 
found at Madame du Deffand's, where, by the way, the people did 
not sup. " Last night, at my Lady Hervey's," says Walpole, "Mrs. 
Dives was exjDressing great panic about the French," who were said 
to be preparing to invade England. " My Lady Kochford, looking 
down on her fan, said, with great softness, ' I don't know ; I don't 
think the French are a sort of people that women need be afraid of.' " 
This was more commendable wit than that of Madame du Deffand 
herself, who, as I have previously remarked, made a whole assembly 
. laugh, at Madame de Marchais', when her old lover v/as known to 
be dying, by saying as she entered, " He is gone ; and wasn't it 
lucky ? He died at six, or I could not possibly have shown myself 
here to-night." 

Our vain lady-wits, however, too often lacked refinement. " If 
I drink any more," said Lady Coventry at Lord Hertford's table, 
" if I drink any more, I shall be 'muckibus.' " " Lord !" said Lady 
Mary Coke, " what is that ?" " O," was the reply, " it is Irish for 
sentimental /" In those days there were no wedding breakfasts : 
the nuptial banquet was a dinner, and bride and bridegroom saw 
it out. Walpole congratulates himself that, at the marriage of his 
niece Maria, " there was neither form nor indecency, both which 
generally meet on such occasions. They were married," he adds, 



24:0 TABLE TEATTS. 

" at my brother's in Pall Mall, just before dinner, by Mr. Keppel ; 
tbe company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel and Charlotte, 
Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave, and L We dined 
there ; the Earl and new Countess got into their post-chaise at 
eight o'clock, and went to Navestock alone, where they stay till 
Saturday night." Walpole gives instances enough — and more 
than enough — where matters did not go ojfF so becomingly. Lords 
and Ladies were terribly coarse in sentiment and expression ; and 
the women were often worse than the men. "Miss Pett," says the 
writer whom I have so often quoted, " has dismissed Lord Buck- 
ingham : tant mieux pour lui ! She damns her eyes that she will 
marry some Captain : tant mieux pour elleP This is a sample of 
Table Traits in IVGO ; and it was long before manners and morals 
improved. The exam.ple was not of the best sort even in high 
places. The mistress of Alfieri dined at Court, as widow of the 
Pretender ; and Madame du Barry was publicly feasted by our 
potential Lord Mayor. 

Some of the women were not only coarse in speech, but furies 
in act, and often sharpers to boot. Thus, when " Jemmy Lumley," 
in 1761, had a party of ladies at his house, with whom, after din- 
ner, he played whist, from six at night till noon the next day, he 
lost two thousand pounds, which, suspecting knavery, he refused 
to pay. His antagonist, Mrs. Mackenzie, subsequently pounced 
upon him in the garden of an inn at Hampstead, where he was 
about to give a dinner to some other ladies. The sturdy " Scotch- 
woman," as Gray calls her, demanded her money, and, on meeting 
with a refusal, she " horsewhipped, trampled, bruised," and served 
him with worse indignities still, as may be seen by the curious, in 
Gay's Letter to Warton. Lumley's servants only with difficulty 
rescued their master from the fury, who carried a horsewhip 
beneath her hoop. The gentlemen do not appear to have been so 
generous, in their character of lovers, as their French brethren, 
who ruined themselves for " les beaux yeux " of some temporary 
idol. Miss Ford laughed consumedly at Lord Jersey, for sending 
her ("an odd first and only present to a beloved mistress") a 



niJ3LE TKAITS OF THE LAST CENTUEY. 241 

boar's head, which, she says, "I had often the honour to meet at 

your Lordship's table before and would have eat it, had it 

been eatable." 

The public are pretty familiar with the Household-Book of the 
Earl of Northumberland ; and have learned much therefrom touch- 
ing the Table Traits of the early period in which it was written. 
A later Earl did not inherit the spirit of organization which influ- 
enced his ancestor. " I was to dine at Northumberland House," 
says Walpole, in 1765, " and went there a little after hour. There 
I found the Countess, Lady Betty Mackinsy, Lady Stratford, my 
Lady Finlater, — who was never out of Scotland before, — a tall, lad 
of fifteen, her son. Lord Drogheda, and Mr. Worseley. At five " 
(which is conjectured to have been the hour of extreme fashion a 
century ago) " arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the Lords had com- 
menced to read the Poor Bill, which would take, at least, two 
hours, and, perhaps, would debate it afterwards. We concluded 
dinner would be called for; it not being very precedented for 
ladies to wait for gentlemen. No such thing! Six o'clock came, — 
seven o'clock came, — our coaches came ! Well ! we sent them 
away ; and excuses were, we were engaged. Still, the Countess's 
heart did not relent, nor uttered a syllable of apology. We wore 
out the wind and the weather, the opera and the play, Mrs. Cor- 
nely's and Almack's, and every topic that would do in a formal 
circle. We hinted, represented — in vain. The clock struck eight. 
My lady, at last, said she would go and order dinner ; but it was 
a good half-hour before it appeared. AVe then sat down to a table 
of fourteen covers ; but, instead of substantial, there was nothing 
but a profusion of plates, striped red, green, and yellow, — gilt 
plate, blacks, and uniforms. My Lady Finlater, who never saw 
those embroidered dinners, nor dined after three, was famished. 
The first course stayed as long as possible, in hopes of the Lords ; 
so did the second. The dessert at last arrived, and the middle 
dish was actually set on, when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay 
arrived ! Would you believe it ? — the dessert was remanded, and 
the whole first course brought back again I Stay — I have not 
11 



242 TABLE TRAITS. 

done ! Just as this second first course had done its duty, Lord 
]^orthumberland, Lord Straflbrd, and Maclrinsy came in ; and the 
whole began a third time. Then the second course, and the des- 
sert ! I thought we should have dropped from our chairs with 
fatigue and frimes. When the clock struck eleven, we were asked 
to return to the drawing-room and take tea and coffee ; but I said 
I was engaged to supper, and came home to bed !" This dinner 
may be contrasted with another given at a later period, by a mem- 
ber of the same house. The nobleman in question was an Earl 
Percy, who was in Ireland with his regiment, — the Fifth Infantry ; 
and who, after much consideration, consented to give a dinner to 
the Officers in garrison at Limerick. The gallant, but cautious, 
Earl ordered the repast at a tavern, specifying that it should be 
for fifty persons, at eighteen-pence per head. The officers heard 
of the arrangement, and they ordered the landlord to provide a 
banquet at a guinea j9er head, promising to pay the difterence, in 
the event of their entertainer declining to do so. When the ban- 
quet was served, there was but one astonished and uncomfortable 
individual at the board; and that was the Earl himself, who beheld 
a feast for the gods, and heard himself gratefully complimented 
upon the excellence both of viands and wines. The astonished 
Earl experienced an easily-understood difficulty in returning thanks 
when his health v/as drunk with an enthusiasm that bewildered 
him ; and, on retiring early, he sought out the landlord, in order 
to have a solution of an enigma that sorely puzzled him. Boni- 
face told the unadorned and unwelcome truth ; and the inexperi- 
enced young Earl, acknowledging his mistake, discharged the bill 
with a sigh on himself, and a cheque on his banker. 

A host, after all, may appear parsimonious without intending to 
be so. " This wine," said one of this sort to the late Mr. Pocock 
of Bristol, who had been dining with him, " costs me six shillings 
a bottle !" " Does it ?" asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay 
reproof, " then pass it round, and let me have another sixpenn'- 
orth !" 

But, to return to our Table Traits of the last Century. In 1753, 



TABLE TKAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 2:1:3 

on ttie 4tli of June, there was an installation of Knights of tlie 
Garter, at Windsor Castle, followed by a great dinner, and a ball. 
It would seem as if tbe public claimed the right of seeing the 
spectacle for which they had to pay ; for we read that " the popu- 
lace attempted several times to force their way into the hall where 
the Knights were at dinner, against the Guards, on which some 
were cut and wounded, and the Guards fired several times on 
them, with powder, to deter them, but without eifect, till they had 
orders to load with ball, which made them desist." This is an ill- 
worded paragraph from the papers of the day; but it is a graphic 
illustration of the manners of the period. 

These few samples of what society was in the last century, 
would suffice alone to show that it was sadly out of joint. What 
caused it ? Any one who will take the trouble to go carefully 
through the columns of the ill-printed newspapers of the early 
part of the last century, will find that drunkenness, dissoluteness, 
and the sword hanging on every fool's thigh, ready to do his bid- 
ding, were the characteristics of the period. People got drunk at 
dinners, and then slew one another, or in some other way broke 
the law. Lord Mohun and Captain Hall dined together before 
they made their attempt to carry oft' Mrs. Bracegirdle ; and when 
defeated in their Tarquin-like endeavour, they slaughtered poor 
Will Montford, the player, in the public streets, for no better rea- 
son than that Montford admired the lady, and Hall was jealous of 
the admirer. But neither copious dining, nor copious drinking, 
could make a bTave man of Mohun. In proof of this, it is only 
necessary to state that before he fought his butchering duel with 
the Duke of Hamilton, he spent the previous night feasting and 
drinking at the Bagnio, which place he left in the morning, with 
his second, Major-General M'Carty, as the " Post-boy " remarks, 
"seized with fear and trembling." "The dog Mohun," as Swiffc 
styled him, was slain, and so was the Duke ; but it is uncertain 
whether the latter fell by the hand of his adversary, or the sword 
of that adversary's second. A few years later we read of 
Fuhvood, the lawyer, going to the play after dinner, drawing 



244 TABLE TRAITS. 

upon Beau Fielding, running him througli, rushing in triumph to 
another house, meeting another antagonist, and getting slain by 
him, without any one caring to interfere. 

In one of the numbers of the " Daily Post" for 1726, I find it 
recorded that a bevy of gallants, having joyously dined or supped 
together, descended from a hackney-coach in Piccadilly, bilked 
the coachman, beat him to a mummy, and stabbed his horses. 
Flushed with victory, they rushed into a neighbouring public- 
house, drew upon the gallants, terrified the ladies, and laughed at 
the mistress of the establishment, who declared that they would 
bring down ruin upon a place noted for " its safety and secrecy." 
The succeeding paragraph in the paper announces to the public 
that the Bishop of London will preach on the following Sunday in 
Bow-church, Cheapside, on the necessity for a reformation of 
manners ! 

The Clubs, and especially the " Sword Clubs," with their feast- 
ings and fightings, were the chief causes that manners were as 
depraved as they were. After supper, these Clubs took possession 
of the town, and held their sword against every man, and found 
every man's sword against them. The "Bold Bucks," and the 
" Hell-Fires," divided the Metropolis betv/een them. The latter, a 
comparatively innocent association, found their simple amusement 
in mutilating watchmen and citizens. The " Bold Bucks " took 
for their devilish device, " Blind and Bold Love," and, under it, 
committed atrocities, the very thought of which makes the heart 
of human nature palpitate with horror and disgust. No man 
could become a member who did not denounce the claims both of 
nature and God ! They used to assemble every Sunday at a 
tavern, close to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. During divine 
service, they kept a noisy band of horns and drums continually at 
work : and, after service, they sat down to dinner, the principal 
dish at which was a " Holy-Ghost pie !" Assuredly the sermon of 
the metropolitan Prelate was much needed ; but, when preached, 
reformation did but very slowly follow, especially in high places. 
At the very end of the century we hear of the Prince of Wales 



TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTUKT. 245 

dining at tlie Duke of Queensberry's, at Riclimond, with the last 
mistress of Louis XV, ; and nobody appears to have been scan- 
dalized. And til is v/as the characteristic of the time : vice was 
not only general, but it did not very seriously offend the few 
exceptional individuals. For the first three quarters of the 
century the epitaph of that time might have been taken from the 
eulogium passed by a May-Fair preacher in his Funeral Sermon 
nj^on Frederick, Prince of Wales : " He had no great parts, but 
he had great virtues ; indeed, they degenerated into vices : he 
w^as very generous ; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great 
many people ; and then his condescension was such, that he kept 
very bad company." 

I have, elsewhere, spoken of some of the roystering Clubs of 
the last century; but I cannot refrain from adding two other 
instances here, 'as examples of the Table Traits of the same 
period. The Calves'-Head Club estabhshed itself in Suffolk- 
Street, Charing Cross, on the anniversary of the martyrdom 
of King Charles, in the year 1735. The gentlemen members had 
an entertainment of calves' heads, some of which they showed to 
the mob outside, whom they treated with strong beer. In the 
evening, they caused a bonfire to be made before the door, and 
threw into it, with loud huzzas, a calf's head, dressed up in a nap- 
kin. They also dipped their napkins in red wine, and waved 
them from the windows, at the same time drinking toasts publicly. 
The mob huzzaed, as well as their fellow brutes of the Club ; but, 
at length, to show their superior refinement, they broke the win- 
dows ; and at length became so mischievous, that the Guards 
were called in to prevent further outrage. 

The above was, no doubt, a demonstration on the part of gen- 
tlemen of republican principles. Some few years later, a different 
instance occurs. The "Monthly Review," May, 1757, mentions, 
that " seven gentlemen dined at a house of public entertainment 
in London, and were supposed to have run as great lengths in 
luxury and expense, if not greater, than the same number of per- 
sons were ever known to do before at a private regale. They 



246 TABLE TRAITS. 

afterwaixis played a game of cards, to decide whicli of them 
should pay the bill. It amounted to ^681. lis. Qd.\ besides a 
turtle, which was a present to the company." This was certainly 
a heavy bill. A party of the same number at the Clarendon, and 
with turtle charged in the bill, would, in our days, find exceeding 
difficulty in spending more than £5 each. Their grandsires 
expended more than twice as much for a dinner not half as 



It is only with the present century that old customs dis- 
appeared ; and, with regard to some of them, society is all the 
better for their disappearance. Even plum porridge did not sur- 
vive the first year of this half century ; when the more solid and 
staple dynasty of plum-pudding was finally established. Brand 
relates, that on Christmas-Day, 1801, he dined at the Chaplain's 
table, at St. James's, " and partook of the first ^ling served and 
eaten on that festival, at that table, namely, a tureen full of rich 
luscious plum-porridge. I do not know," he says, " that the cus- 
tom is any where else retained." The great innovation, after this, 
was in the days of the Regent, when oysters were served as a 
prelude to dinner. This fashion was adopted by the Prince on 
the recommendation of a gentleman of his household, the elder 
Mr. Watier, who brought it with him from France, and added an 
" experto crede " to his recommendation. This fashion, however, 
like others, has passed away ; and oysters and drams, as overtures 
to dinner, are things that have fallen into the domaiji of history. 

There was a custom in these later days, much observed at Christ- 
mas time, which deserves a word of notice. I allude to the 
" Christmas-tree." The custom is one, however novel in England, 
of very ancient observance elsewhere. Its birth-jDlace is Egypt. 
The tree there used was the palm ; and the ceremony was in full 
force long before the days of Anthony and Cleopatra. The palm 
puts forth a fresh shoot every month. Its periodical leaves appear 
as regularly as those of Mr. Bentley's " Miscellany." In the time 
of the winter solstice, when parties were given in ancient Misraim, 
a spray of this tree, with twelve shoots, was suspended, to symbolize 



TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 247 

the completion of anotlier year. Tiie custom passed into Italy, 
where the fir-tree was employed for the purposes of celebration ; 
and its pyramidal tips were decorated with burning candles, in 
honour of Saturn. This festival, the Saturnalia, was observed at 
the winter solstice, from the I'Zth to the 21st of December, and, 
during its continuance, Davus was as good a man as Chremes. 
The Sigillaria, days for interchanging presents of figures in wax, 
like those on the Christmas-tree, followed ; and, finally, the Juven- 
alia, when men became " boys with boys," matrons turned children 
once again, and young and old indulged in the solemn romps with 
which the festival closed, and which used to mark our own old- 
fashioned festivities at Christmas time. That the Egyptian tree 
jDassed into Germany, may be seen in the pyramids which some- 
times there are substituted for the tree. But the antique northern 
mythology has supplied some of the observances. The Juel Fesi 
was the mid- win ter " Wheel Feast;" and the wheel represented 
the circling years which end but to begin again. The yule-log, 
as we call it, was the wheel-shaped log ; in front of which was 
roasted the great boar, — an animal hateful to the god of the sun, 
but the flesh of which was religiously eaten by his worshippers. 
At this festival presents were made, which were concealed in wrap- 
pers, and flung in at open windows, emblematical, we are told, of 
the good, but as yet hidden, things which the opening year had 
in store. 

The Church generally made selection of the heathen festivals 
for its own holy-days. In the early days, this was done chiefly to 
enable Christians to be merry without danger to themselves. It 
would not have been safe for them to eat, drink, and rejoice on 
days when Pagan Governments put on mourning. They w^ere 
glad, then, when these were glad, and feasted with them, but hold- 
ing other celebrations in view. Hence the German tree ; only, 
for the sun which crowned the Roman tree, in honour of Apollo, 
the Germans place a figure of the Son of God ; and, for the Phoebus 
and his flocks at the foot, they substitute " the Good Shepherd." 
The waxen figures are also the sigillaria, but with more holy 



24:8 TABLE TEAITS. 

impress. The Saturnalia have a place at the table joys that 
attend the exhibition of the tree, in presence of which joy is sup- 
posed to wither. 

In conclusion, I cannot but notice one other table custom, which 
is of Teutonic origin. I allude to the Cabinet dinners given by 
Ministers previous to the opening of Parliament, and at which the 
Royal Speech is read, before it is declared in the presence of 
collective wisdom. This, at all events, reminds us of the ancient 
German custom, mentioned by Tacitus, who tells us, that the Teu- 
tonic legislators and warriors consulted twice touching every 
question of importance : once, by night, and over the bowl ; and 
once, by day, when they w^ere perfectly sober. Of course, I would 
not insinuate that ministers could possibly indulge too fondly over 
their cups, like the Senators of the Hercynian forest; and yet 
Viscount Sidmouth's vice, as Lord Holland tells us, " was wine ;" 
and we have heard even of grave Lord-Stewards so drunk as to 
pull down the Monarchs they held by the hand, and should have 
supported. The last unfortunate official who so offended, should 
have craftily qualified his wine with water ; and the mention of 
that subject reminds me of the origin of wine and water, of which 
I will say a few words, after adding one or two more traits of table 
manners. 

I have spoken, in another page, of the unlucky exclamation 
touching haddock, which caused the perpetual exile of Poodle 
Byng from Belvoir. There was, however, no offence meant. How 
different was the case with that impudent coxcomb, Brummell, 
who managed to be the copper-Captain of fashion in London, when 
the true Captains were fighting their country's battles ! When 
Brummell was living almost on the charity of Mr. Marshall, he 
w^as one of a dinner party at that gentleman's house, whither he 
took with him, according to his most impertinent custom, one of 
his favourite dogs. The " Beau " had, during dinner, helped him- 
self to the wing of a roasted capon stuffed with truffles. He chose 
to fancy that the wing was toug^h, and, delicately seizing the end 
of it with a napkin-covered finger and thumb, he passed it under 



TABLE TEAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY. 2i9 

the table to liis dog, with the remark, " Here, Atout / try if you 
can get your teeth through this ; for I '11 be d — d if I can." ISTot 
less ungratefully impudent was this gentleman-beggar on another 
occasion. A French family had given a dinner entirely on his 
account. It was perfect in its w^ay. The ortolans came from Tou- 
louse, the salmon was from the waters in the neighbourhood of 
Eouen, and the company most select. A friend, encountering him 
the next day, asked how the dinner had gone off. Brummell 
lifted up his hands, shook his head in a deprecatory manner, and 
said, " Don't ask me, my good fellow ; but, poor man ! he did 
his best." 

The two most recent examples of Table Traits of the present 
century, that I have met with, illustrate the two extremes of society; 
and as they refer to a period of not above a month ago, they will 
serve, not inaptly, to close this section of my series. The first 
example is that afforded by a dinner given at Boston, in Lincoln- 
shire, to twenty aged labourers. At this dinner, one of the gen- 
tlemen donors, of the feast, gave " the Ladies," and called on the 
octogenarian Chairman to return thanks. The old President, how- 
ever, shook his head, with a mixed melancholy and cunning air, 
as if he too. well knew there was nothing to return thanks for. 
The venerable " Vice " was then appealed to ; but his reply was, 
that the least said about the subject of the toast would be the 
soonest mended. At length, a sprightly old man of threescore 
and ten was requested to respond, he having a gay look about him 
which seemed warranting gallantry ; but he surprised the toast- 
giver by answering, that " as for t' leddies, he 'd nowt to say ; for 
his part, he 'd never liked 'em." This unchivalrous sentiment awoke, 
at last, the spirit of a strip of a lad who was only sixty-five ; and 
he responded to the toast, with a touch of satire, however, in his 
remarks, that left it uncertain whether he were so much a champion 
of the fair sex, as the company expected to find in him. The 
second " Trait " of the customs of this country is presented by the 
dinner given in February of the present year, by Earl Granville, 
the guests at which were Lord Aberdeen, the Bishop of Oxford, 
11* 



250 TABLE TEAITS. 

and Mr. Bright. There were not such startling contrasts at the 
reconciliation dinner which brought Wilkes and Johnson together, 
as at Earl Granville's unique banquet. The host and the Premier 
represented — the first, smiling courtesy; the second, the most 
frigid severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest contrast 
was in the persons of the Bishop and the " Friend :" — Dr. Wilber- 
force, highest of Churchmen, briefest of Preachers, and twice as 
much curled as the son of Clinias himself; while Mr. Bright, with 
every hair as if a plummet depended at the end of it, hating the 
Church, but not indifferent to petits pates a la braise, must have 
looked like the vinegar of voluntaryism that would not mingle with 
the oil of orthodoxy. To have made this banquet complete, there 
should have been two more guests, — Dr. Gumming and Dr. Cahill, 
with aj^propri^te dishes before each : — a plate of sweatbreads in 
front of the gentle apostle of the Kirk ; and a bowl of blood-pud- 
dings opposite the surpliced Priest who has gained a gloomy 
notoriety by the " glorious idea," to which I have referred, of a 
massacre of English heretic beef- eaters, by the light-dieted holders 
of Catholic and continental bayonets. But Dr. Cahill, it may be 
hoped, is something insane, or would he have deliberately recorded, 
as he did the other day in the " Tablet," that it were much better 
for Romanists to read immoral works than the English Bible ? 
His excellent reason is, that " the Church " easily forgives immo- 
rality, but has no mercy for heresy. Well, well ; we should not 
like to catch a Confessor of this school sitting next our daughter 
at dinner, and intimating that Holywell-street literature was better 
reading than the English version of the Sermon on the Mount. — 
But let us sweeten our imagination with a little Wine and Water. 



WESTE AlsTD WATEK. 251 



WINE AND WATER. 



Early age, and the oldest poets, confessed, that wine was the 
gift of the gods to men. The latter would appear to have abused 
the gift, if we may believe Philonides the physician, who wrote a 
treatise "On Perfumes and Garlands" {ILepl Mvpoyv icaX Sre- 
(pdvojv.) In this treatise he asserts, that, when Bacch us brought the 
vine from the Red Sea into Greece, men drank to such excess, that 
they became as beasts, and incapable of performing manly duties. 
A party of these revellers were once drinking by the sea-shore, 
when a sudden storm drove them into a cave for shelter. They 
do not seem, however, to have been inveterate tipplers; for, 
according to Philonides, they left their cups on the beach. When 
the shower had passed, they found the wine in them mingled 
with rain-water ; and, very much to their credit, they liked the 
mixture so well, that they solemnly thanked the " good genius " 
who had sent it. Hence, when wine was served at Grecian 
repasts, the guests invoked this good genius ; and when the turn 
came for wine mixed with water, they acknowledged the benevo- 
lent inventor by the name of Jupiter Saviour. 1 may take this 
opportunity to state, that at one period, it was the fashion to 
attend these drinldng entertainments in a pair of " Alcibiades," or 
boots which had been rendered popular by being first worn by 
the curled son of Clinias. Thus we see, that in our fashion of 
conferring on boots the authorities of great names, we are doing- 
nothing original ; and that men used to call for their " Alcibi- 
ades," as they do now for their "Wellingtons," "Bluchers," or 
"Alberts." 

To revert, for a moment, to the question of wine and water, I 
would state, that it has been discussed in its separate divisions by 
German writers, the substance of whose opinions I will venture to 
give in verse, without desiring, however, to be considered as 
endorsing every sentiment in full. As French music-books say, it 
is a.n^^ Air a faired 



252 TABLE TEAITS. 

Do you ask what now glows 
la this goblet of mine i' 

Wine ! wine ! wine ! wine ! 
To the stream do ye ask, 
Shall my cup-bearer go ? 
No ! no ! no ! no ! 
Let water its own frigid nature retain 5 
Since water it is, let it water remain ! 
Let it ripple and run in meandering rills, 
And set the wheels going in brook-sided mills. 
In the desert, where streams do but scantily run, 
If so much they're allowed by the thirsty old sun, 
There water may be, as it's quaff'd by each man, 
Productive of fun to a whole caravan. 

But ask what now glows, &c. 

Yes, water, and welcome, in billows may rise, 
Till it shiver its feathery crest 'gainst the skies ; 
Or in dashing cascades it may joyously leap, 
Or in silvery lakes lie entranced and asleep ; — 
Or, e'en better still, in full showers of hope, 
Let it gaily descend on some rich vineyard's slope, 
That its sides may bear clusters of ripening blisp. 
Which, in Autumn, shall melt into nectar like this. 
Like this that now glows, &c. 



Let it bear up the vessel that bringeth us o'er 
Its freight of glad wine from some happier shore. 
Let it run through each land that in ignorance lies : 
It the Heathen will do very well to baptize. 
Yes, water shall have ev'ry due praise of mine. 
Whether salt, like the ocean, or fresh, like the Rhine^ 
Yes, praised to the echo pure water shall be. 
But wine, wine alone is the nectar for me ! 

For 't is that which now glows 

In this goblet of mine. 
Wine ! wine ! wine ! wine ! 

No attendant for me 

To the river need go. 
No ! no ! no ! no ! 



WINE AND WATEK. 253 

The various merits and uses of tlie respective liquids are fairly- 
allowed in the above lines ; but I may observe, that wine apolo- 
gists, generally, are sadly apt to forget, that there are such things 
as conscience and to-morrow morning. For their edification and 
use, I indite the following colloquy, to be kept in mind, rather than 
sung, at all festivities where the " Aqua Pumpaginis " is held in 
abhorrence : 

See the wlae in the bowl, 

How it sparkles to-night ? 
Tell us what can compete 

With that red sea of light ; 
Which breathes forth a perfume 

That deadens all sorrow, 
And leaves us blessed now, 
(Conscience loquitur.) 
" With a headache to-morrow I" 

Where are spirits like those 

That we find in the bowl, 
Shedding joy round our brows, 

Breathing peace to the soul ? 
Our tongues feel the magic, 

There our strains, too, we borrow 
We 're Apollos to-night, 

(Conscience loquitur,) 
'• To be songless to-morrow !" 

0, this rare inspiration! 

How gay are the dreams 
Of the thrice triple blest 

Who may quaff of thy streams ! 
It expels from the heart 

Sulky care, that old horror, 
And tells laughter to-night 

(Conscience, ashamed of the rhyme) 
" To wake sadness to-morrow !" 

Drink deep, though there be 

Thirstless fools, who may preach 
Of the sins of the bowl, — 

Do they act a^g they teach ? 



254: TABLE TUAITS. 

If we 're sinners, what then ! 

As we 're not friends to sorrow 
We '11 be glad ones to-night, 

(Conscience loquitur,) 
" To be sad ones to-morrow !" 

Ah ! that was old Conscience : 

Him we '11 drown in the wine ! 
Plunge him in ! hold him down ! 

Ah ! he dies ! — now the Nine 
May, to write in his praise, 

From our Helicon borrow. 
He 's done talking to-night ; 

(Conscience, from the bowl,) 
" You shall hear me to-morrow !" 

Finally, being on Pegasus, and he ambling along through this 
chapter of Wine and Water, I will take the opportunity, as con- 
nected with my subject, of doing justice to a flower whose "capa- 
bility," as Mr. Browne used very properly to say, has been over- 
looked, — I mean the tulip :-— 

Praise they who will the saucy vine. 
With her thousand rings and her curls so fine ! 
But I fill up. 
To the tulip-cup, 
All looking as though it were bathed in wine. 
Ah, show me the flower, 
In vale or bower. 
That looks half so well as this bowl of mine I 
O, who this night will fail to fill up. 
Or to sing in praise of the tulip-cup ?" 

Praise they who will the willow-tree, 

With her drooping neck and her tresses free, 

That bend to the brink 

Of the brook, and drink 
Of a liquid that will never do for me ! 

While tulip-cup 

Is for ever held up, 
As though she could drink for eternity. 



WINE AJSTD WATER. 255 

And that is the very bowl for me, 
Who hate the sickly willow-tree ! 

The water-lily praise they who will : 
Of water we know that she loves her fill. 

But what, pray, is she, 

To the tulip, that we 
Have loved for so long, and love so well still ?" 

Ah ! who doth not think her 

A mere water-drinker, 
That quaffs but such wine she can get from the rill? 
Then fill up to-night to the tulip tall, 
Who holds forth her cups, and can drain them all ! 

See how naturally we drop out of the subject of "Wine and 
Water," into that of " Wine," to which we now, reverently, yet 
joyously, address ourselyes. 



256 TABLE TKAITS. 



THE BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME 
OF IT. 

The birth of the vine was in this wise. On the day of the 
creation, the trees vied with each other in boasting ; and each 
exulted in the enjoyment of his own existence. " The Lord him- 
self," said the lofty cedar, "planted me, and in me has he united 
stability and fragrance, strength and durability." " Me," said the 
shade-spreading palm, " hath the beneficence of Jehovah appointed 
for a blessing, joining together in me utility and beauty." Then 
the apple-tree spoke : " As a bridegroom among youths, so am I 
resplendent among the trees of the woods." " And I," said the 
myrtle, " stand among the lowly bushes, like a rose among thorns." 
In this manner boasted they all, the olive and the fig ; yea, the 
pine even, and the fir exulted. 

The vine alone, in silence, stooped to the ground. " It seems," 
said she to herself, " as if everything were denied me, — stem and 
branch, blossom and fruit ; but, such as I am, I will hope and 
wait. Thus speaking, she sank to the earth, and her branches 
wept. 

But not long did she thus wait and weep ; for, behold, cheerful 
man, the earthly god, drew nigh unto her. He saw a weak plant, 
the plaything of the breeze, sinking under its own weight, and 
pining for assistance. Touched with compassionate feeling, he 
upheld it, and trained the delicate tree over his own bower. More 
freely now sported the air among its branches. The warmth of 
the sun penetrated the hard green berries, preparing therein the 
delicious juice, — a drink for gods and men. Laden with cluster- 
ing grapes, the vine now bowed herself before her lord, and the 
latter tasted of her refreshing sweets, and named her his friend — 
his own grateful favourite. It was now that the proud trees envied 
her, but many of them lived on in sterility, while she rejoiced, full 
of gratitude at her slender growth, and patient humility ; and 



BIETH OP THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 257 

tlierefore it is, tliat it is given to her to make glad the heart of 
sorrowing man, to elevate the cast-down spirit, and to cheer the 
afflicted. 

" DesjDair not," says Herder, who thns tells the old traditionary 
story of the vine, — " Despair not, O thou that art deserted, but 
endure patiently. Sweet streams issue from unlikely sources; 
and the feeble vine affords the most potent draught in the 
world." 

Let us, however, turn from poetical tradition to prosaic reality. 
The vine is, by birth, a Persian. Its cradle was on the sunny 
slopes of the hilly regions on the south shores of the Caspian 
Sea. There, in the Caucasus, and in Cashmere, the wild vine still 
climbs and clings to the very necks of the most towering trees. 
Its life-blood in those regions is seldom turned to evil purpose. In 
Caubul it is taken less in potions than in powder. The Caubulese 
dry and grind it to dust and eat thereof, finding it a pleasant acid. 
This is half matter of taste and half matter of medicine, just as 
over-wearied digestions in Germany drive their wretched owners 
into vineyards, to abstain from meat, and live for a while, upon 
raisins. Indeed the vine was never meant entirely for enjoyment. 
It is one of the most perfect of chymists; and if it offers grapes 
in clusters, its twigs afford carbonate of potash, serviceable for 
many purposes, and, among others, for correcting the acidity 
brought on by too free indulgence in the fruit, or in its expressed 
liquid. 

In the olden days, when the Patriarchs vvorshipped Heaven in 
the " cathedral of immensity," Palestine was renowned for the 
glory of its grapes. There were none other to compare with them 
upon earth. When the desert-traders were waiting the return of 
their emissaries, whom they had sent from Kadesh-Barnea to spy 
the Promised Land, their thirsty impatience was exchanged for 
delight at beholding their agents re-appear, bearing between them, 
upon poles, gigantic clusters, — the near fountains whence their 
dried up souls might draw new life and vigour. The grapes of 
Palestine are still remarkable for their great size. Clusters are 



258 TAELE TRAITS. 

spoken of, eacli of wliicli exceeds a stone in weight ; and vines are 
mentioned, whose stems measured a foot and a half in diameter, 
and whose height reached to thirty feet ; while their branches 
afforded a tabernacle of shade, to the extent of thirty feet square. 
But it could not have been from such a vine that the men from 
Kadesh-Barnea collected the grapes Vvdiich they could scarcely 
carry. The Welbeck grapes which the Duke of Portland sent to 
the Marquess of Rockingham, were of Syrian origin ; and these 
— on a single bunch, weighing nineteen pounds, and measuring 
three-and-tvventy inches long, with a maximum diameter of nearly 
twenty inches — were borne upon a pole a distance of twenty miles, 
by four laborers ; two to carry, and two to relieve. So that the 
conveying grapes in this fashion may have been more on account 
of their delicacy than of their weight. The Hampton Court vine, 
too, produces clusters of great weight, and covers a space of not 
less than 2,200 feet. 

The vine has been figuratively employed as an emblem of fruit- 
fulness, of security, and peace ; and no doubt can exist of its hav- 
ing been cultivated at a very early period. JS'oah planted the 
vine immediately after the Deluge ; and, from the first thing 
planted, sin came again into the world, bringing with it widely- 
extending consequences. Bread and wine are mentioned in Gene- 
sis. Pharaoh's chief butler dreamed of a vine with three branches; 
and the Israelites (in N^umbers) complained that Moses and Aaron 
had brought them out of Egypt into a dry and barren land, where 
there were neither figs nor vines. So, in after-years, the com- 
panions of Columbus sailed tremblingly with their calm Captain 
over trackless seas, and murmured at him for bringing them from 
the olives and vines of Spain, to the very confines of creation, 
where terror reigned, and death sat enthroned. 

Jacopo di Bergamo gives a singular account of the reason 
which induced iSToah to plant the vine. The Patriarch did so, he 
says, because he saw a goat in Cicily eat some wild grapes, and 
afterwards fight with such courage, that Noah inferred there must 
have been virtue in the fruit. He planted a vine, therefore, and 



BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 259 

wherefore is not told — manured it with the blood of a lion, a 
lamb, a swine, and a monkey, or ape. But this, perhaps, only 
signifies that, by drinking wine, men become bold, confiding or 
meek, filthy or obscene. 

It is stated by Theodoret, that Noah himself, after pressing the 
grapes, became intoxicated through inexperience, as he had been 
a water-drinker for six centuries ! The sin of Lot is supposed to 
have been committed, not merely under the influences of wine, 
but of a maddening and drugged draught. The evil power of 
wine is well illustrated by the story of the Monk, to whom Satan 
offered a choice of sins, — incest, murder, or drunkenness. The 
poor Monk chose the last, as the least of the three ; and, when he 
was drunk, he committed the other two. 

Commentators pronounce our rendering under the single word 
" wine," the tlA'teen distinct Hebrew terms used in the Bible to 
distinguish between wines of different sorts,, ages, and condition, 
as a defect of great magnitude ; and no doubt it is so. The know- 
ledge of mixing wines appears to have been extensively applied 
by the ancient people ; and it is said of the beautiful Helen, that 
she learned in Egypt the composition of the exhilarating, or rather, 
stupefying, ingredients which she mixed in the bowl, together with 
the wine, to raise the spirits of such of her guests as were 
oppressed with grief. I may notice, too, here, that our word 
shrub, or syrup, is an Eastern word. In Turkey, a shiruh-jee is 
simply a " wine-seller." 

Yes, despite the Prophet, the Turks drink wine more than 
occasionally, and under various names. Tavernier speaks of a 
particular preparation of the grape drunk by the Grand Seignior, 
in company with the ladies of the seraglio ; and a similar beverage, 
it is conjectured, was quaffed by Belshazzar and his concubines 
out of the holy vessels, and was offered in vain to the more scru- 
pulous Daniel, it was a rich and royal drink, made strong by the 
addition of drugs ; and the object of drinking the potent mixture 
was the same as that which induced Conrad Scriblerus and the 
daughter of Caspar Barfchius to live for a whole year on goat's 



260 TABLE TKAITS. 

milk and honey. Either mixture was better than that of the 
Persians, who " fortified " their wines, or syrup of sweet wines, by 
adding to them the very perilous seasoning of nux vomica. But 
none of these were so curious as the " wine-cakes " eaten by Mr. 
Buckingham : these were, I suppose, made of wine preserves. 

But pure wine may be eaten, or rather, be rendered harder than 
any of our common food. Thus we hear of Russian troops being 
compelled, in very hard winters, to cut out their rations of wine 
from the cask with a hatchet. 

I think it is the renowned Dissenter, Toplady, who remarks, that 
the only sarcastic passage in Scripture is to be found in the cutting 
speech of Elisha to the Priests of Baal : " Is not Baal a god, see- 
ing that he eateth much meat ?" There is, hovf ever, another iron- 
ical passage, in reference to wine. " Give Shechar unto him who 
is ready to perish," is the satirical speech of Lemuel's mother, who 
warns her royal son against the deceitful influences of intoxicating 
beverages, representing them as especially destructive to those 
who are charged with the government of nations; and then iron- 
ically points to the man who foolishly concludes, that in the sweet 
or strong drink he may bury all memory of the cares and anxie- 
ties brought upon him by his own profligacy. 

There is, however, a difference of o|)inion touching the spirit in 
which the last words quoted from Scripture are used. The Rabbins 
interpret the passage as a command to administer wine to the in- 
dividual about to suflfer death. Thus wine mingled with myrrh 
was ofl'ered to One of whom the Gospel records, that He refused 
what His enemies presented. 

The custom of offering doomed criminals a last earthly draught 
of refreshment is undoubtedly one of eonsiderable antiquity. The 
right of ofi'ering wine to criminals on their passage to the scaffold 
was often a privilege granted to religious communities. In Paris, 
the privilege was held by the convent of Filles-Dieu, the ISTuns of 
which kept wine prepared for those who were condemned to suffer 
on the gibbet of Montfaucon. The gloomy procession halted 
before the gate of the monastery, the criminal descended from the 



BIRTH OF THE VINE. AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 261 

cart, and the Nuns, headed by the Lady Abbess, received him on 
the steps with as much, perhaps more heartfelt ceremony than if 
he had been a King. The poor wretch was led to a crucifix near 
the church door, the feet whereof he humbly kissed. He then 
received, from the hands of the Superior, three pieces of bread, 
(to remind him of the Trinity,) and one glass of wine (emblem of 
Unity). The procession then resumed its dread way to the 
scaffold. 

Elie Berthet tells us of a poor wretch, who, on being offered the 
usual refreshment, quietly swallowed the wine, and coolly put the 
bread in his pocket. When again in the cart, his observant Con- 
fessor asked him his reason for the act. "I suppose, Father," 
answered the moribund, " that the good sisters furnished me with 
the bread that it may serve me in paradise ; on earth, at all events, 
it can no longer be of use to me." " Be of good cheer," said 
another Confessor, who was encouraging a criminal on the Greve ; 
" be of good cheer. To night you vv^ill sup in paradise." " Tenez, 
mon Pere^'' answered the poor fellow ; " allez-y-vous a ma place ; 
car^ 'pour moi^ je rt'ai pas faimr This incident had been made 
good use of by the " ballad " waiters both of England and France. 

" Bowl-yard," St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, preserves in its name the 
memory of a similar custom in England. This yard, or alley, 
adjacent to the church, is a portion of the site of the old 
Hospital for Lepers, the garden of which was a place of execu- 
tion. Lord Cobham, under Henry V., and Babington and his 
accomplices, for conspiring against Elizabeth, were executed here. 
Stow tells us that, " at this hospital, the prisoners conveyed from 
the city of London toward Tyburn, there to be executed for 
treason, felonies, or other trespasses, were presented with a great 
hoiul of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, (?) as to be their 
last refreshment in this life." In later days, the criminals were 
sometimes supplied by their friends from the public-houses on the 
line of road. In one case, a convict happily tarried drinking for 
a longer space of time than usual. The rope was just round his 
neck, when tbe arrival of a reprieve saved him. Had he drunk a 



262 TABLE TRAITS. 

glass less, lie would have been hanged a moment sooner ; and 
society would thus have been deprived of his valuable services. 
He was a luckier man than the saddler in Ireland, who, on his 
way to the gibbet, refused the ale and wine offered him on the 
road, who was accordingly very rapidly dispatched, and for whom 
a reprieve arrived a minute too late for him to profit by it. 
Hence the proverb, applied by those who press reluctant people to 
drink, " Ah, now go away wid you. Ye 're like the obs'inate sad- 
dler, who was hanged for refusing his liquor." It certainly was 
not a custom with Irish convicts to decline the " thrink," before 
trial or after. " The night before Larry was stretch'd," is a slang 
lyric, graphically illustrative of the grace with which Irish crimi- 
nals took leave of life. The most singular thing, however, con- 
nected with the popular lay, question, is, that it was written by a 
Clergyman. But, at the time of its production, such authorship 
excited no surprise in the literary public. The " cloth " was still 
of the quality of that in which Fielding's Newgate Chaplain 
walked ; and he, it will be remembered, was a pious gentleman, 
who candidly avowed that he was the rather given to indulge in 
punch, as that was a liquor nowhere spoken against in Scripture ! 

But it was not English or Irish Chaplains, of the olden tim^e, 
who stood by themselves in their respect for good liquor. If that 
reverend and rubicund gentleman, Walter de Mapes, wrote the 
best Latin drinking-song that Bacchanalian inspiration ever pro- 
duced, so did a German Prelate preach the best sermon on the 
same text. I allude to the Bishop of Triers, or Treves. Here is 
an odour, caught by the way, of the full bottle of counsel which 
he poured out to his hearers : — 

"Brethren, to whom the high pri^dlege of repentance and 
penance has been conceded, you feel the sin of abusing the gifts 
of Providence. But, ahusum non tollit usum. It is written, 
'Wine maketh glad the heart of man.' It follows, then, that to 
use wine moderately is our duty. N'ow there is, doubtless, none 
of my male hearers who cannot drink his four bottles without affect- 
ing his brain. Let him, however, — if by the fifth or sixth bottle 



BmTH OE THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 263 

he no longer knoweth his own y/ife, — if be beat and kick liis 
children, and look on his dearest friend as an enemy, — refrain 
from an excess displeasing to God and man, and which renders 
him contemptible in the eyes of his fellows. But whoever, after 
drinking his ten or twelve bottles, retains his senses sufficiently to 
support his tottering neighbour, or manage his household affairs, or 
execute the commands of his temporal and s|)iritual superiors, let 
him take his share quietly, and be thankful for his talent. Still, 
let him be cautious how he exceed this ; for man is weak, and his 
powers limited. It is but seldom that our kind Creator extends 
to any one the grace to be able to drink safely sixteen bottles, of 
which pri\dlege he hath held me, the meanest of his servants, 
worthy. And since no one can say of me that I ever broke out 
in causeless rage, or failed to recognise ray household friends or 
relations, or neglected the performance of my spiritual duties, I 
may, with thankfulness and a good conscience, use the gift w'hich 
hath been intrusted to me. And you, my pious hearers, each take 
modestly your allotted portion ; and, to avoid all excess, follow 
the precept of St. Peter, — ' Try all, and stick by the best !' " . 

The sermon is not a bad illustration of what was, and remains, 
historical fact. The first Archbishop of Mayence was the 
Englishman Boniface ; and most of his successors might have 
been characterized by his name. They w^ere more powerful than 
the Emperors, and more stately than Moguls. The Canons of the 
Cathedral, supported by its enormous revenues, lived a jovial life. 
The Pope, indeed, reproved them for their worldly and luxurious 
habits ; but they uproariously returned for answer, " We have no 
more wine than is needed for the Mass ; and not enough to turn 
our mills with I" 

Good living, as it was erroneously called, w^as certainly, at one 
time, an universal observance in Germany, when the sole wish of 
man was, that he might have short sermons and long puddings. 
"When this wish prevailed, every dining-room had its faulhett, or 
sot's couch, in one corner, for the accommodation of the first 
couple of guests who might chance to be too drunk to be 



264: TABLE TEAITS. 

removed. Indeed, in German village-inns, the most drunken 
guests were, in former days, by far the best off; for, while they 
had the beds allotted tliem, as standing in most need of the same, 
the guests of every degree, whether rich or poor, the perfectly 
sober — wherever such phenomena were to be found — and those 
not so intoxicated but they could stagger out of the room, all 
lodged with the cows among the straw. 

Probably, no country on the earth presented such scenes, aris- 
ing from excessive drinking, as were witnessed in Saxony and 
Bohemia, a few generations back. These scenes were so com- 
monly attended by murder, or followed by death, that it was said 
to be better for a man to fall among the thickest of his enemies 
fighting, than among his friends when drinking. There were 
deadly brawls in taverns, deadly drunken feuds in the family 
circle, and not less deadly contentions in the streets. When the 
city-gates were closed at night, the crowds of drunkards, issuing 
to their homes in the suburbs, were met by as dense and drunken 
a crowd, returning from their revels in the country. And then 
came the insulting motion, the provoking word, the hard blow, 
and the harder stab. Then fell the wounded and the dead ; then 
rose the shrieks of women and of children, and, loud above them, 
the imprecations and blasphemies born in the wine-sodden brains 
of men. Suddenly, a shot or two is fired from the walls, right 
into the heaving mass below. And then ensue the flying of the 
people, and the venting of impotent rage from the rash and reso- 
lute. But, gradually, the two opposing streams glide through 
each other, the gates are at length closed ; and, by the light of 
the moon, on the almost deserted esplanade, may be observed, 
stretched on the ground, some half-dozen human forms. Some of 
these are dead, some are still drunken and helpless, and both 
equally uncared for. 

This is no overdrawn picture of an ancient German Period. It 
is on record that once, on the banks of the Bohemian Sazawa, a 
party of husbandmen met for the purpose of drinking twelve 
casks of wine. There were ten of them who addressed themselves 



BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 265 

to this feat ; but one of the ten attempting to retire from the con- 
test before any of his fellows, the remaining nine seized, bound 
him, and roasted him alive on a spit. The murderers were sub- 
sequently carried to the palace for judgment ; but the Duke's 
funeral was taking place as they entered the hall, and the Princes 
who administered justice were all so intoxicated, that they looked 
upon the matter in the light of a joke that might be compen- 
sated for by a slight fine. 

There w^as a joyous revelry at that time in every direction. A 
father would not receive a man for a son-in-law who could not 
drink ; and in Universities the conferring of a degree was always 
followed by a carouse, the length of which was fixed, by College 
rules, as not to exceed eight hours' duration. Yet, during this 
generally dissolute period, a strange custom was prevalent at the 
tables of Nuremberg. In all well-regulated households, there used 
to hang a little bell beneath the dining-table ; and this bell was 
struck by the master of the family, if he were sober enough, when- 
ever any one uttered an unseemly phrase. 

Even so, in public, a voice of indignation was sometimes raised 
against the profligacy of the period. The voice to the people at 
large was as the bell to the guests at Nuremberg. Its efiects who 
can tell ? It may have induced Luther to be content with digni- 
fied Virgil rather than with unclean Plautus ; it may have driven 
the Monk Schwartz from the refectory to the alembic ; and it may 
have called Gutemberg from the brutalities of the camp to the 
wonders of the printing-press. In the two latter cases the conse- 
quences bear a very tipsy appearance ; for it was a soldier who 
invented printing, and a Monk who first manufactured gunpow- 
der! 

Let us not hasten to condemn our fellows of the olden time 
and distant land. Manners as fearfully outraging prevailed but 
very recently among young Englishmen. M. de Warenne, a French 
officer in our Indian army, describes the manners and customs ^ 
there prevalent as any thing but edifying. In his ^^Inde-Anglaise,^^ 
he describes himself, on one occasion, as being disinclined for 
12 



266 TABLE TKAITS. 

study, and consequently joining a party of his comrades who were 
at the moment occupied in an unreserved enjoyment of the plea- 
sures of the table. They were from fifteen to twenty in number, 
married and single, but all young, full of hope, good prospects, 
and gaiety. Deep were the libations made by this riotous com- 
pany, seated at a festive board in the open air, looked down upon 
by a brilliant moon, and gently fanned by the evening breeze. 

" While the attendant servant," says the author, " poured out, 
with Indian profusion, fresh supplies of tea, coffee, beer, punch, 
and grog, a dense vapour rose from our cigars, and joyous shouts 
rang from every lip at the conclusion of songs, bacchanalian and 
anacreontic. Toasts succeeded each other rapidly, alternately 
exciting the laughter or approbation of the carousers. One of 
them caused in me, at the time, a singular impression. A young, 
wild-brained fellow, in pouring out a bumper, called on us to fill 
our glasses, in order to sanction the strange wish of a rash ambi- 
tion, — 'A bloody war, and a sickly season!'" 

The blasphemous sentiment, as M. de "Warenne rightly teniis it, 
was drunk with enthusiasm ; and the gay and thoughtless drinkers 
had yet the cup to their lips, when one of them was stricken with 
the cholera, the presence of which in camp was hardly known ; — 
the next day the funeral salute was fired over his grave. The 
author adds, that the music played on returning from the funeral 
was joyously and daily hummed by the daily diminishing survivors. 
He says that there was a mockery in the waltzes they continued 
to dance ; for death was also daily decreasing their orchestra. The 
stricken, we are told, felt themselves relieved from further anxiety, 
recovered their temporarily shaken self-possession, and died with 
indifference. The strong who lived are described as, for the most 
part, diverting their thoughts, outraging decency, and defying God, 
by composing or chanting songs whose inspiration certainly savours 
of hell. Here is a specimen of one of these devil's canticles, 
• roared over wine, to frighten away the cholera ; — 



BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 267 

I. 

" We meet 'neath the sounding rafter, 

And the walls around are bare ; 
As they shout back our peals of laughter, 

It seems as the dead were there. 
Then stand to your glasses !~steady ! 

We drink 'fore our comrades' eyes 5 
One cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies ! 



n. 

*' Not here are the goblets glowing, 

Not here is the vintage sweet ; 
'T is cold as our hearts are growingj 

And dark as the doom we meet. 
But stand to your glasses! — steady! 

And soon shall our pulses rise ; 
One cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies ! 

ni. 

" There 's many a hand that 's shaking. 

And many a cheek that 's sunk ; 
But soon, though our hearts are breaking, 

They '11 burn with the wine we 've drunk. 
Then stand to your glasses I— steady ! 

'T is here the revival lies 5 
Quaff a cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies 1 

IV. 

" Time was, when we laugh'd at others, 

We thought we were wiser then : 
Ha ! ha ! let them think of their mothers, 

Who hope to see them again. 
No ! stand to your glasses ! — steady I 

The thoughtless is here the wise 5 
One cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies I 



268 TABLE TEAITS. 

y. 

"Not a sigh for the lot that darkles, 

Not a tear for the friends that sink ; 
We ']1 fall 'mid the wine-cup's sparkles, 

As mute as the wine we drink. 
Come ! stand to your glasses ! — steady ! 

'T is this that the respite buys ; 
One cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies ! 

VI. 

" Who dreads to the dust returning ? 

Who shrinks from the sable shore, 
Where the high and haughty yearning 

Of the soul can sting no more ? 
No ! stand to your glasses ! — steady ! 

This world is a world of lies ! 
One cup to the dead already ; 

Hurrah for the next that dies ! 

vn. 

" Cut off from the land that bore us, 

Betray'd by the land we find, 
When the brightest are gone before us, 

And the dullest are most behind, — 
Stand ! stand ! to your glasses ! — steady ! 

'T is all we have left to prize ! 
One cup to the dead already ! 

Hurrah for the next that dies !" 

After this, tlie most rigid examiner of public morals in all coun- 
tries need not exclusively frown on the old Germans, nor on their 
profane canticle, the burthen of which is : — 

^' Gaudeamus, igitur, juvenes dum sumus! 
Post Jucundmn juventutem, 
Post molestam senectutem, 
J\ros habebit, nos habebit, nos habebit tumulus /" 

There is, however, more reason, and healthy sentiment, and pure 



BIETH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT. 269 

principle, in sucL. lines as the following, — extracted from Walter 
Savage Landor's " Last Fruit off an Old Tree," — than in reams of 
such fiery invocations to quaff deeply as those cited above. Hear 
the old man : — 

*' The chrysolites aud rubies Bacchus brings, 

To crown the feast where swells the broad-vein'd brow, 
Where maidens blush at what the minstrel sings, 
They who have courted, may court now. 

" Bring me a cool alcove, the grape uncrush'd, 
The peach of pulpy cheek and down mature ; 
Where ev'ry voice, but bird's or child's, is husht. 
And ev-'ry thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure." 

There was a Persian sage, whose philosophy was of a different 
complexion from that of the eloquent moralist of " the old garden 
near Bath." " In what can I best assist thee ?" demanded the 
Minister, Nizam-al-Mulk, as he warmly greeted his friend Omar 
Keyoomee. "Place me," said Omar, enamoured of poetry and 
ease, "where my life may pass without care or annoyance, and 
where wine, in abundance, may inspire my muse." A pension was 
accordingly assigned him in the fertile district of Mshapour, where 
Omar lived and died. His tomb still exists, and Mr. J. B. Fraser, 
in his " Persia," informs us that he heard Omar's story told over 
his grave by a brother rhymester, and a most congenial spirit. The 
system of Omar w^as explained by himself, in something after this 
fashion : — 

I ask not for much : let the miser seek wealth ; 

Let the proud sigh for titles and fame : 
All the riches I ask are a fair share of health, 

And the hope of a true poet's name. 
Let the flatterer talk of his worth to the Shah, — 

Of his greatness, too, all the day long ; — 
I envy them not, for I love better far 

To pay my poor tribute in song. 

A kaftan of honour ! a gem from the King 
To bo gain'd in the field or divan ? 



270 TABLE TKAITS. 

Ah ! rather around me the bright mantle fling 

Of the poets of gay Laristan. 
Let the gems be for those of the glittering crowd, 

Who would die, the Shah Inshah to please ; 
But /'m not ambitious, I never was proud, 

I sigh but for sherbet and ease. 

Do I wish for command in dark history's page. 

Do I long in fond record to shine ? 
Yes, let me have sway, till the last sigh of age, 

Over cohorts of old Shiraz wine. 
And as for renown, it may be very well, 

But Keyoomee the honour will wave ; 
Contented if some brother rhymester will tell 

Keyoomee's glad life, o'er his grave. 



THE MAKING AND MAKEING OF WINE. 271 



THE MxiKING AI^D MARRING OF WINE. 

It used to be said of tlie old learned and liquor-loving Germans, 
that they did not care what Latin they spoke, so long as it luas 
Latin ; nor what sort of wine they drank, so long as it was wine. 
I have read somewhere of a feudal German Baron becoming 
intoxicated upon pious principles. He was seated, with his wife 
at his side, at the centre of his own table, presiding at a banquet. 
He had drunk till he had scarcely power left to carry the goblet 
up to his ever-thirsty lips. The Frau Baroninn had repeatedly 
remonstrated, in whispers, with her lord ; who replied, that he 
must needs drink when toasts were given, or his Vi^ant of faith 
would be marked by his guests. He was about to raise a full gob- 
let to his beard, when his lady, overturning, as if by accident, the 
cluster of lights which illuminated the board, begged of her con- 
sort to fling his wine away upon the floor ; adding, " It is dark ; 
nobody will see you." " Nay," said the orthodox Baron, solemnly, 
" God sees me !" and therewith he finished his draught, and v/as 
soon after conveyed to his couch, under such benison as the Chap- 
lain could give, who congratulated his master upon the flavour of 
his wine, and the strength of his principles ! 

In no country in the world has more wine been drunk than in 
Germany ; and no where has adulteration thereof been practiced 
so systematically. " Vaticana hihis^ bibis venenum^^^ saj^s Martial, 
in the sixth book of his Epigrams. For " Vaticana,^'' read " Ger- 
manica ;" and the line had, at one time, as fitting an application. 
The method pursued appears to have been of classical derivation ; 
and the Germans, like the Romans, adulterated their wine with 
lead. It has been a matter of vexation to Teutonic scholars, that 
they have never been able to discover the name of the ingenious 
person who first realized the deadly idea of employing lead in the 
adulteration of wine. All that they can say of him is, that he 
was very wicked, but decidedly clever. 



272 TABLE TEAITS. 

The Roman wine-mercliants treated the matter in a business-like 
way. Lead arrested the acetous fermentation of wine, did not 
alter its colour, and did improve its taste. This was all that was 
desirable, as regarded them as merchants. If the beverage gave 
death, by slow or speedy means, to those who drank, that was an 
affair which concerned the imbibers, their medical men, and their 
families. They were ignorant and godless Heathens, of course, 
who committed this crime; and as nothing like it has ever been 
known as a characteristic of some of the professors of a better 
dispensation, — why, our righteous indignation may be intense. 
One excuse, indeed, may be offered for the old Romans. "At 
lovers' perjuries," as they were told, " Jove himself condescended 
to laugh ;" and, if so, they might feel canonically certain, that 
Mercury would not call them to account, but rather applaud their 
proficiency in cheating. • But Galen was more just than the gods 
of either the Greek or Roman mythology, and sternly denounces 
the tricks at which the son of Maia would have smiled. 

The same ancients were accustomed to boil new wine in metal 
vessels ; and, when the quantity had been reduced by the process, 
to add sea-water and bad wine, and send the mixture to market as 
something that would make the very eyes of Bacchus twinkle 
with delight. A process not less distasteful, if less deadly, was that 
of boiling lime and plaster of Paris in inferior wine. The former 
was supposed to add an intoxicating quality to the mixture, which 
must have been as detestable as " Masdeu." To this day, certain 
wines of the Mediterranean are subjected to a similar process ; 
and, perhaps, if lime be judiciously used, the results may not be 
very injurious. It corrects acidity ; but too much of it would 
enable the drinker to find out, as Falstaff did, that there was " lime 
in the sack." We are wise in our generation, in employing car- 
bonate of soda for this purpose, rather than lime, slaked or 
unslaked; and we also do well to reject gypsum, — a compound of 
sulphuric acid and lime, and which is seldom procurable in a suffi- 
ciently 23ure state to authorize its being employed. The rejection 
of plaster of Paris, for the purpose of improving wine, is, however, 



THE MAKING Al^D MAKRING OF WINE. 273 

more general than universal. After all, it is not worse than cal- 
cined shells, and is innocuous when compared with the use of sugar 
of lead. 

The Roman law was not levelled against the adulteration of 
wine ; it no more controlled the sale or manufacture, than, in 
Thevenot's days, the Tunisian government interfered with the sale 
of wine at Tunis, which was left to slaves, who did with it as 
they liked, for their own profit, and the destruction of infidel 
stomachs. It was otherwise in Germany, where Diets were assem- 
bled to discuss what was, in truth, no unimportant matter ; the 
members of which began to think, that if wine was worth having, 
it was worth providing for its purity. For centuries Governments 
made laws, but bad wine was drunk in spite of them. 

Beckmann gives it as his opinion, that wines cannot be poisoned 
by gypsum ; but that is more readily said than proved. The 
ancients clarified their wine with it ; but they did so at the 
expense of a portion of the spirituous part. Old ordinances 
against the adulteration of wine, in Brussels, by vitriol, quicksil- 
ver, and lapis calaminaris^ — and in France, by lead and litharge, 
— may still be read as curiosities, but they have no present appli- 
cation. 

A German Monk, named Martin Bayr, is damned to everlasting 
fame, as the first who adulterated wines within the territory of the 
Kaiser. Pickheimer, the friend of Albert Durer, is particularly 
inveterate against Bayr and his followers in evil. The indignation 
of the lover of pure wine is carried to an incredibib extent. He 
narrates, in a rapt fury, the consequences of drinking injurious 
wines ; beginning with an assurance, that adulterated wine keeps 
the married childless, and adding, by a sort of bathos, that it 
causes certain inward pains, "than which none can be more 
excruciating." He mentions many ingredients employed, and 
adverts to some, "the names of which I should be ashamed to 
mention ;" and then he calls for vengeance on the offenders, both 
in this world and the next. " You hang the counterfeiters of the 
public coin," says he ; " do not these miscreants, whose misdeeds 
12* 



274 TABLE TEAITS. 

have caused indignant Nature to clieck the growth of our grapes, 
deserve something worse ? Cast their accursed beverage, I say, 
into the sewers, and themselves into the flames : and so may Martin 
and his disciples perish in this world, and inherit everlasting dam- 
nation in the next !" 

Adulteration, however, still went on, until the penalty of death, 
and confiscation of property, was levelled against the employment 
of sulphur and bismuth, — used by the most noble wine-makers to 
sweeten their spoiled and sour commodity. Offenders, however, 
again grew bold. The tribunals treated them leniently. First, 
fines were levied ; then came confiscation of property, imprison- 
ment, and hard labour ; next, banishment : and none of these 
meeting the evil, the Judges at length cut oflf the head of an 
incorrigible criminal, Ehrni of Erlingen ; and, for a while, terrified 
the whole brotherhood of wine-spoilers into a temporary observance 
of honesty. 

The next struggle which occurred in Germany, was between 
those who applied tests to detect the presence of metals, and 
those who invented processes to defy them. It was a scientific 
struggle between two species of assassins, — those who swiftly 
killed by brewing poisonous wine, and the physicians who racked 
their brains to invent detective tests, and save their patients for a 
slower process of extinction. This was very rudely said by rude 
people, who looked upon themselves as the victims sought for by 
the two contending parties, — the distillers on one side, and the 
doctors on the other. 

The use of milk by the Greeks was, probably, not for adulterating, 
but for refining, their wdnes. Isinglass is at present generally 
employed for the last-mentioned purpose. 

As it is the tendency of the world to improve, so the not 
inconsiderable world of adulterators in England has profited, like 
philosophers, by the discoveries of those who have preceded them. 
A mixture of strong port, rectified spirit, Cognac brandy, and 
rough cider, can be concocted into what is called " fine old crusted 
port." It costs the maker about sixteen shillings a gallon, and is 



THE MAELNG AND jIAPwKI^G OF WINE. 275 

sold retail at five shillings a bottle. Sloe-juice is anotlier ingre- 
dient, and poisonous tinctures give it a seductive hue. Powder 
of catechu does for it what hair-powder does for the individual, — 
gives a crust of antiquity to secure for it the veneration of the 
ignorant. A decoction of Brazil wood, and a little alum, will 
impart to the corks the requisite air of corresponding age ; and 
these the credulous gaze at and believe. 

"Madeira, neat as imported," is the definition of a beverage 
cleverly manufactured much nearer Fenchurch-street than Fun- 
chal. Home-made Madeira is a compoimd of bad port, Vidonia, 
that African nastiness called "Cape," sugar-candy, and bitter 
almonds ; and the Vidonia, which is an ingredient in itself, often 
adulterated with cider and rum ; and a little carbonate of soda, 
" to contumace the appetite's acidities." The lowest and cruellest 
insult to human tastes and stomachs is, perhaps, the adulteration 
of Cape. It is bad enough in itself; but Cape, with something- 
worse in it, is only fit for the thirsty hounds of Pluto. Goose- 
berry, passed off" as Champagne, is an impostor, and even with 
strawberries in it, to give it an aristocratic pinkness, it is still a 
deception ; but, compared with Cape, even in its best condition, 
gooseberry may be imbibed without very much disgust. 

K fracas between the w^aiters and their employers at the last 
Lord-Mayor's dinner, betrayed another pleasant process regarding 
wine. The attendants in question declared that, after many hours' 
toil, they had not had a glass even out of a dovered bottle. They 
were as much surjDrised when the Magistrate asked the meaning 
of " aovering^'' as the sailor was, when he stood before a Lord 
High Chancellor ignorant of the signification of " 'baft the bin- 
nacle." A complaisant Ganymede enlightened the darkened mind 
of the metropolitan Cadi : " Dovering^'' said he, " is the collecting 
of three-quarter emptied decanters from the dinner-table, and 
re-decantering the same, serving it up as freshly uncorked." 
Dover has the bad reputation of being the locality where this process 
was first invented. 

One of the most ingenious — perhaps we should say, one of the 



276 TABLE TKAITS. 

most scientific — tricks that we have heard of, in connexion with 
wine-doctoring, proves that the modern chymical brewers of supe- 
rior beverages, which seem what they are not, are vastly superior 
to the mere experimentalists of former days. In the royal cellars 
of Carlton House, there was enshrined, if we may so speak, a 
small quantity of wine which, like the gems worn by the Irish 
lady, was both " rich and rare." It was only produced by George 
IV. when he had around him his most select and wittiest friends. 
The precious deposit gradually diminished ; year by year, as in 
the case of the famous shagreen skin of the French novelist 
Balzac, it grew less, until, at last, a couple of dozen bottles only 
were left, gleaming at the bottom of their bins like gems in a 
mine, and full of liquid promise to those who needed the especial 
comfort which it was their duty to impart. These, however, were 
left so long unasked for, that the gentlemen of the King's suite 
who had the control of the grape department, deemed them for- 
gotten, and at their own mirthful table drank them all but two, 
with infinite delight to themselves, and to the better health of 
their master. They soon found, however, that there was 
garlic in the flowers," as the Turkish proverb has it; and 
their embarrassment w^as not small, when the King, giving his 
orders for a choice dinner on a certain night, intimated his desire 
that a good supply of his favourite wine should grace the board. 
In Courts, " to hear is to obey ;" and the officials who had drunk 
the wine, at once resorted to an eminent firm-, well-skilled to give 
advice in such delicate wine-cases. The physician asked but for 
a sample bottle, and to be told the exact hour at which the 
favourite draught would be asked for. This was complied with, 
and in due time a proper amount of the counterfeit wine was for- 
warded to Carlton House, and there broached and drunk with 
such encomiums, that the officers who were in the secret had 
some difficulty in maintaining an official gravity of countenance. 
The brewer of the new wine was certainly a first-rate artist ; and 
if he ever achieved knighthood and a coat-of-arms, I would give 
him a " Bruin " for his crest, and, " The drink I the drink ! dear 



THE MAKING- AOT3 MAIiEING OF WINE. 277 

Hamlet !" for liis device. This anecdote, I may farther notice, 
has often been told, and nearly as often been discredited ; but I 
am assured by an officer of the household, who speaks " a'vec con- 
naissance de fait^'' that it is substantially true. 

One of the merits of the wine above mentioned consisted in -its 
great age. There has, indeed, always been a sort of mania for 
wine that bears the load of years. But this rage is pronounced 
by Cyrus Redding to be one of the most ridiculous errors of 
modern epicurism. The "bee's wing," the "thick crust on the 
bottle," the " loss of strength," and so on, — all these are declared 
by the best judges to be nothing more than forbidding manifesta- 
tions of decomposition, and the disappearance of the very best 
qualities of the wine. Many years ago, I made a " note " on this 
subject, but am now unable to recollect from what work, nor can 
I say whether the following remarks on the qualities of Avine 
were made by the author of an original work, or by a reviewer 
commenting thereon. Such as they are, however, they are not 
without value. 

" The age of maturity," says the writer, " for exportation from 
Oporto, is said to be the second year after the vintage ; probably 
sometimes not quite so long. Our wine-merchants keep it in 
wood from two to six years longer, according to its original 
strength, &c. Surely this must be long enough to do all that can 
be done by keeping it. What crude wine it must be to require 
even this time to ameliorate it ! the necessity for which must arise 
either from some error in the original manufacture, or a false 
taste, which does not relish it till time has changed its original 
characteristics. 

" Port, like all other wines, ripens in a shorter, or longer, time, 
according to its lightness, or its strength, the quality of the 
grapes, according to the fermentation they have undergone, and 
the portion of brandy that has been added to it. Also one cellar 
will forward Avine much sooner than another. Sound good port 
is generally in perfection when it has been from three to five years 
in the vv^ood, and from one to three in bottle. 



278 TABLE TRAITS. 

" Ordinary port is a very imcleansed fretful wine ; and we have 
been assured by wine-merchants of good taste, accurate observa- 
tion, and extensive experience, that the best port is rather 
impoverished than improved by being kept in bottle longer than 
two years ; that is, supposing it to have been previously from two 
to four years in the cask in this country ; observing that all that 
the outrageous advocates for vin passe really know about it is that 
sherry is yellow^ and port is hlach ; and that if they drink (more 
than) enough of either of them, according to the colours, it will 
make them drunk. 

" White wines, especially sherry and Madeira, being more per- 
fectly fermented and thoroughly fined before they are bottled, if 
kept in a cellar of uniform temperature, are not so rapidly 
deteriorated by age. 

" The temperature of a good cellar is nearly the same through- 
out the year. Dauble doors help to preserve this. It must be 
dry, and be kept as clean as possible. 

" The art of preserving wines is to prevent them from fretting, 
which is done by keeping them in the same degree of heat and 
careful working, in a cellar where they will not be agitated by the 
motion of carriages passing. If persons wish to preserve the fine 
flavour of their wines, they ought on no account to permit any 
bacon, cheese, onions, potatoes, or cider, in the wine-cellars ; for 
if there be any disagreeable stench in the cellar, the wine will 
indubitably imbibe it; consequently, instead of being fragrant, 
and charming to the nose and palate, it will be extremely 
disagreeable. 

" It must be well-known that almost all our home-made wines, 
for public sale, are made, and suffered to cool, in leaden vats. 
Nothing can be more injurious or detrimental to health. Every 
chymist is aware that any vegetable acid that comes in contact 
with lead, and is suffered to remain only a few hours, produces 
what we call ' sugar of lead,' — a most deadly poison. How many 
there are that complain that cider will not agree with them ! and 
several who cannot take even a wine-glass full without vomiting 



THE MAKING AND MARRINa OF WINE. 279 

almost immediately. They know not the reason ; and thus many 
are prevented from taking a most delightful beverage in warm 
weather ; while others are labouring under its baneful influence. 
Often do we see servants run for vinegar in a pewter or publican's 
pot ; and the answer we receive when correcting them for the 
same is, — they have often done the same without any serious con- 
sequence. May be so; but if vinegar, or any other vegetable 
acid, as before said, be suffered to remain in such vessels only a 
short time, the health and constitution must suffer from the acid 
so taken ; and we will venture to say that almost all paralytic 
affections are caused by persons, predisposed to such attacks, 
drinking water impregnated with lead. For if there be any car- 
bonic acid in the water, which there most assuredly is in every 
kind, a carbonate is thus formed, just as injurious as the acetate 
(sugar of lead) ; and where shall we find a cistern in London that 
is not made of this pernicious, yet highly useful, material ?" 

The consideration of these subjects, when drinking home-made 
wines, (if, indeed, there he people bold enough to venture on such 
an experiment,) or the other beverages mentioned above, might 
serve the purpose of the custom observed among the ancient 
Egyptians. It was one less barbarous than singular. A skeleton 
of beautiful workmanship, in ivory, and enclosed in a small coffin, 
was carried round at a feast, by a slave, who, holding it up to 
each guest, remarked, " After death you will resemble this figure ; 
drink, then, and be happy !" It must have encouraged the mirth 
" consumedly." But there was a grave wisdom m the custom, 
notwithstandins;. 



280 TABLE TEAITS. 



IMPERIAL DRINKERS AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 

The stories of the gigantic drinkers of antiquity are startling ; 
but I think they ruay be accounted for. Natural philosophers 
inform us, that objects seen through a mist are magnified to the 
senses ; and so it is with the feats which we are asked to contem- 
plate through the mist of ages : they are probably not so astound- 
ing as they appear. One may say of each story, so venerable and 
enlarged by age, as the good Dominican did to the congregation 
whom he had affected to tears by the warmth of one of his legen- 
dary sermons. " Do not cry so, my brethren," said the Preacher ; 
" for, after all, perhaps it 's not true." 

It must be allowed, however, that the stories of wine-bibbers 
of later times than those when the son of Aristides gained his 
living by singing ballads in the streets of Athens, or the heir of 
Cicero drank draughts longer than his sire's orations, lack nothing 
whatever of the marvellous. And this reminds me of an incident, 
quod alibi narravi, and which I will narrate here, by way of illus- 
tration of this portion of my subject. 

AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL. 

It is now some twelve years ago that I was, in company with 
two Norwegians, in Prague, loitering beneath the tower of that 
sacred edifice dedicated to the fearful dancer, St. Vitus. The tower 
was the same which the drunken Emperor Wenceslaus had caused 
to be shortened, by some thirty or forty feet, because he took it 
into his head that it would one day fall, and crush him as he lay 
on his uneasy couch in the Hradschin. I remarked to my com- 
panions, that the empire, in its palmy days, had often been well- 
nigh lost through the mad caprices of tippling Kaisers. 

"There was not a Kaiser of them all," said Lov»^enskiold, "who 



IjMPEEIAL DEINEEES, and incidents in GERMANY. 281 

permanently injured either himself or his country by his devotion 
to drinking," 

" What !" said T ; " not even Maximilian ?" 

" ISTot even Maximilian," remarked Knudtzen. " The people, 
indeed, were occasionally a trifle startled at seeing their ruler pro- 
ceed, either to the camp or council, with as much white wine in 
him as might serve the universe for sauces. They slightly objected 
on hearing that he walked rosy and reeling to confession ; and 
they were not edified at understanding that his private Almoner 
stirred up his punch \^dth a silver crucifix. They even remon- 
strated with Maximilian when he had been once within an ace of 
destroying Ulm in a drunken frolic. And what was his reply ? 
He kept the deputation of remonstrants the whole night in his 
palace, and invited the citizens to assemble, at day-break, on what- 
ever spots commanded a view of the towers of the cathedral. The 
Emperor and the Committee of Moderates finished two hundred 
and ten bottles of Rhine wine while they waited for sunrise. This, 
among a temperate party of one score and one, was a tolerable 
allowance for each individual. At dawn, all Ulm was up, and 
every eye directed to the cathedral. The towers had scarcely 
flung back the first rays from heaven, when a joyous procession 
issued from the imperial residence. The whole party, the Emperor 
excepted, were as drunk as JEschylus. With difficulty did they 
follow their Lord, who, at the very top of his speed, and carrying 
a heavy waggon-wheel on his shoulder, ran to the cathedral, 
ascended the stairs leading to the summit of one of the towers 
and appeared on the rampart, before his straggling followers had 
reached the low-arched door beneath. With a light bound, he 
sprang on one of the highest parts of the castellated portion, 
where there was scarcely footing for him. In that position, how- 
ever, he poised the wheel aloft with his right hand, let it gently 
descend on to the foot which he extended above the heads of the 
multitude, and, holding it there for a moment or two, ended by 
hurling it into the air, and catching it again, ere it fell on the 
astounded and admiring crowd below. 



282 TABLE TRAITS. 

" ' There, you calves !' cried the Emperor, as he gazed tranquillr 
down on the sea of heads below ; ' do you dare complain that 
Niedersteiner touches your master's nerves V 

" ' Never again !' exclaimed the delighted mass. ' What can we 
do to testify our affection for Your Majesty V 

" ' Toss those gentlemen into a tub of Selzer-water,' said Maxi- 
milian, 'and send me half-a-dozen of Hochheimer, and half-a- 
dozen blood-puddings, for breakfast.' " 

I could almost believe this tradition ; for I had seen a nearly 
similar feat once performed by a w^oman on a projecting mass of 
rock in the Ahr Thai. The rock is, doubtless, well known to all 
who have ascended that lovely Rhine-valley, at eve, to eat Forel- 
ien, and drink Wallportzheimer. They who do so, generally return 
the next morning with an inclination for nothing but the cooling 
mineral waters to be had at Hippingen. 

" Besides," said Knudtzen, " a-propos to cathedrals, sober prin- 
ciples have done them more injury than jolly Emperors. Do you 
forget that Caroline Bonaparte razed a cathedral in Italy to the 
ground ?" 

" I remember hearing of the deed as connected with a church," 
said I ; " but I have forgotten the reason alleged for it." 

" It W' as a very sufficient reason for a Bonaparte. Her High- 
ness lived next door to the church ; and she had it destroyed, 
because the noise of the organ kept her awake, and the smell of 
the incense made her head ache." 

" Royal minds," I remarked, " cannot condescend to the weak- 
nesses of common people. According to our 'Philosophical 
Transactions,' the pigeons at Pisa were as destructive as Caroline 
Bonaparte. Pigeons, for many ages, built under the roof of the 
great church there. Their dung spontaneously took fire at last ; 
and the church was consumed. But to return to the old, defunct 
King of Saxony. He was afflicted with a super-delicate attack of 
^drtue ; and, during the prevalence of the disorder, he issued a 
decree for the expulsion, from his picture-gallery, of all those 
master-pieces, the merit of which lay in the glory of their flesh- 



IMPERIAL DEINKEES, AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 283 

colouring. He had grown as modest as the Monk who declared 
that he had never seen any portion of his body save his face and 
hands. He is worthy of going down to posterity arm in arm 
with that old Polish King, who was a cleaner, hut not a less deli- 
cate, man than the Monk, and who boasted to his Confessor that 
his purity of mind was so excessive, that he had never touched 
his own skin with an ungloved hand. In short, the old King of 
Saxony admirably illustrated the saying of Dean Swift, that ' a 
nice man was a man of nasty ideas.' He had not been a sparer 
of the wine-flask. Indeed, he had rather sinned that way ; and, 
in expiation thereof, he undertook to perform a pilgrimage to the 
Holy Sepulchre on foot. A fever of expectation shook Dresden, 
all the China in it, and the whole line of road, at the idea of again 
beholding a Christian King turning to the neglected shrine. The 
expectation was not altogether fulfilled ; but the Monarch, never- 
theless, performed the pilgrimage." 

" We never heard of it," exclaimed the travellers, looking at 
each other with some manifestation of surprise. 

"That is to say," I resumed, "that his Majesty performed it 
after a fashion. He inquired the distance from his own country- 
house at Pilnitz, to the Armenian Convent at the Holy City ; and, 
in spite of his education, he was nothing less than astonished, to 
find that it was something more serious than a promenade to 
Toplitz. I do not know if he had a vision of boiling his peas, as 
an English pilgrim did, of whom I could tell you something ; but 
he certainly experienced some unpleasant sensations at the idea 
that, the way being so long, he might chance to find himself with- 
out peas to boil. He wept at the reflection that he might not 
only be a devout, but a hungry. King, while one half of Dresden 
were solacing their appetites on the terrace of Bruhl, and the 
other, at the Baths of Link, or at the Bastei. He thought of the 
dangers; but he loould be devout. The attendant pains were 
great; but the resulting pleasures were not to be denied. In 
short, he would not go to Jerusalem ; but he would perform the 
pilgrimage. Accordingly, the exact distance having been ascei- 



284: TABLE TRAITS. 

tained, lie started from his room, and walked the entire number 
of leagues by pacing up and down a long gallery, deducting from 
the distance the amount of water passage, which was but fair. If 
admiration had been great at the commencement, surprising fun 
was excited during the performance. Every evening the citizens 
of Dresden knew how far their religious Ruler had proceeded 
on his way, or how far he would have proceeded, if he had 
but set out. Now^ he was breakfasting, in imagination at 
Breslau ; sleeping (in fancy) at Olmutz ; and passing, by a plea- 
• sant fiction, through Buda. During two days that his Majesty 
suffered from a real bilious attack, the result, perhaps, of a Barme- 
cidal repast at Essek on the Drave, the King rested at Belgrade, 
while confined to his bed in Dresden. But his zeal soon re- 
invigorated his liver; and, as he glided to and fro by his 
palace windows, the mystified multitude below learned that the 
Monarch was lodging in the house of the Saxon Legation at 
Istamboul. The pilgrim-traveller suffered a little from the heat 
(of the room) as he descended from the western coast of Asia 
Minor ; but the inconveniencies of the route were things beneath 
the thoughts of him who — whether at Bursa, Smyrna, or any 
other locality on his way — could ring his bell in the Desert, and 
order Champagne out of his own cellar. The King was puzzled 
one mid-day, (he had by calculation just reached Beyrout,) his 
progress being checked by the unexpected arrival of a portion of 
the imperial family from Vienna. Visitors of such condition 
must be attended to.; nevertheless, his pilgrimage must be con- 
tinued ; and he, like the clever and facetious palmer that he was, 
did both. He attended his guests with much politeness, during 
their stay of two days ; and he put down the time thus spent, as 
consumed in a sea voyage from Beyrout to Acre. The moment 
they left, the royal pilgrim went ashore again, and happily accom- 
plished the remaining distance to Jerusalem, through Nassara and 
ISTablous, without any other hindrance or obstruction than his going 
one night to see a French vaudeville^ while supposed to be enjoy- 
ing his well-earned repose at Rama or Muddin. And thus was 



IMPEEIAL DEINKEKS, AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 285 

accomplislied tliat royal pilgrimage that was never performed. 
The King reached Jerusalem without going there ; and the people 
saw him return who had never departed." 

" Well," said Harold Knudtzen, " the Kings of Saxony are no 
longer such simpletons. The present Monarch loves, indeed, good 
wine, ' craftily qualified ;' but he also, like Uzziah, King of Judah, 
loves husbandry. Josephine herself had not half so frantic a pas- 
sion for flowers as he ; and not for flowers alone in their beauty, — 
not for botany, either, merely for amusement's sake, but for phy- 
tology and pharmacy, as connected with it." 

" He lisped Linnaeus," said Lowenskiold, " before he could speak 
plainly." 

" And by reputation, he knew Tournefort better than he did 
Knecht Eupert," added Harold. 

" He himself told us, when we met him in Dalmatia," continued 
the latter, " that he could spell Dodecandria and Trigynia before 
he could read Grimm's Story Book ; and that he knew the mean- 
ings of monopetalous and campaniform before he was acquainted 
with the languages from which the terms were derived. I never 
saw a man so eager in pursuit of apetalous amentaceous flowers ; 
and as for carry ophylous " 

" Leave off your abominable phrases !" said I, " and begin by 
telling me how you two very modest fellows introduced yourselves 
to the acquaintance of the Sovereign of Saxony." 

"The introduction was effected through a very light-hearted 
and intelligent fellow-botanizer, whom we met on our way from 
Zara up to the mountains. We had all three lost our way while 
endeavoring to find an infundihuUform " 

" Nay," interrupted I, " I care not what you found, if you choose 
to tell it in pentameters." 

" Well," resumed Knudtzen, " we were in a wild part of the 
country, — weary, hungry, cold, and in the dark. Wanderers could 
not be in a worse plight. We were as fiute as Juno's columns, 
near the church of St. tielia ; and the skeleton doing duty there 
for that of St. Simeon of Judaea, the pride and palladium of the 



2S6 TABLE TEAITS. 

people of Zara, looked in far better condition, and in, especially, 
better raiment, than could be boasted of by us humble pedestrians. 
We had walked many leagues, when we reached a sorry inn kept 
by a Gipsy, where we hoped to find rest and refreshment, but 
were permitted to enjoy neither. Our swarthy host stood in his 
door-way, like Horatius Codes at the head of the bridge. Beds 
he did not even profess to find for travellers. He had not slept for 
years, and was none the worse, he said, for the privation. Leopold 
asked for wine. 

" ' We have three sorts of wine,' said the Gipsy, ' which travel- 
lers like yourselves once tasted and paid for. I have the very 
wines which the seven Schwaben asked for in the Goldenes Kreutz 
at Ueberlingen.' 

" ' What ! old Sauerampfer V cried Lowenskiold. 

" ' The same,' said our singular host. ' It is not quite so sour 
as vinegar, but it will pierce the marrow of your bones like a 
sword ; and it will so twist your mouth, that you shall never get 
it straight again.' 

" ' We will try something better than this acid water,' said 1 1 
* we will ' 

" ' Try the Dreimannerswein ? I am sorry there are only 
women in the house !' 

" ' What, in the name of all your saints in Zara, have your 
women to do with the refreshment we need V 

" ' Do ! nothing in the world ! that is precisely it I You will 
want three men each of you. For Dreimannerswein is three 
times as rough and ten times as sour as vinegar ; and he who drinks 
it must be held fast by two men, while a third pours the liquid 
down his throat 1' 

" ' And what of the third of these Olympic beverages V said I. 

" ' It is called Hachenjoutzer, and has peculiar qualities too. He 
who lies down to sleep with a flask of it in his body, must be 
aroused every half-hour, and turned over. Otherwise a pint of 
Rachenputzer would eat a hole right through his side 1' 

"The Gipsy laughed aloud as he uttered these words. We 



IMPERIAL DElNKEKSj AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 287 

ourselves laughed in despite of our vexation; and, somewhat 
startlingly, a fourth voice took up the cachinnatory affection, and 
laughed even louder than the original three. As the new-comer 
stood in the light of the door-way, the landlord touched his cap, 
withdrew hastily into the passage, and slammed the door in our 
faces, leaving us in Cimmerian darkness, summer trousers, and a 
drizzling rain. The matter was no longer risible, and we were 
beginning to be seriously annoyed, when the mysterious stranger, 
>yhom ^\e could but indistinctly see, invited us to accompany him 
wx knew not whither, and hospitably to partake of we knew not 
what. "VVe accepted the invitation most gratefully ; and after a 
full half-hour's walk, we found ourselves on the skirt of a wood* 
In less than half that time, we subsequently reached a neat little 
house within the wood itself; and I do not think ten minutes had 
elapsed, ere we had made such toilette as travelers may, and, 
with some doubt as to the reality of the circumstance, detected 
ourselves in the act of eating vermicelli soup, and w^ondering how 
it had reached us. 

" Before our repast w^as entirely dispatched, our host, in whom 
we saw a young, well-made, and exceedingly amiable personage, 
informed us that he was on a botanizing expedition for the benefit 
of an establishment in Northern Germany ; that he had been two 
months settled in the house in which we then were, and that he 
had already given temporary shelter to three plant explorers, who 
had resorted, in their need, to the house of Djewitzki, the Gipsy, 
and who had found to their sorrow, that it had nothing of the 
quality of an inn about it, except the sign. 

" We talked of flowers that night," continued Knudtzen, " as 
though they were the foremost as Tvell as the fairest things in all 
the world. But we w^ere sciolists in the science, and, contrasted 
with us, our host was a sage. He knew that agiimony was under 
Jupiter, and angelica under the Sun in Leo; that milfoil w^as 
under the influence of Venus, and that garden basil was a herb 
of Mars. If every new idea be worth the knowing, why, we gained 
knowledge by the information, that all the dodders are under 



550b TABLE TKAITS. 

Saturn. We heard, for the first time, the virtues of the plant 
enohusa." 

" But," interrupted LowensMold, " we were enabled to remind 
our host of what Dioscorides says about it, — that if any who have 
newly eaten of it do spit in the mouth of a serpent, the reptile 
instantly dies," 

" True," said Knudtzen, " we have not been at Upsal for nothing." 
_ " We may all aid each other by turns," I remarked to my two 
friends, as we arrived, after descending from the cathedral, on the 
old bridge over the Moldau. A large herd of cattle was crossing 
it at the time ; and some of the foremost black oxen of this herd 
had bunches of amara dulcis (or "woody nightshade") hung 
round their necks; a common custom in Germany, as I told the 
young travellers, and employed as a remedy against dizziness in 
the head. 

" Of the owner or the ox ?" said Harold, with a laugh. 

" Of him who wears it," I rejoined, " But I want to see the entry 
of your King of Saxony," I continued, " and not to listen to the 
description, uses, and property of herbs, plants, and flowers; 
maiden-hair, moon-wort, and ornithogalum Sjncatum.''^ 

"So much the worse!" answered Knudtzen, " or Leopold and I 
had told you what we learned from our entertainer of celandine ^ 
and what he told us, from Pliny, of the anemone : how he recom- 
mended us, should we ever visit Naples, never to retire to rest 
without strewing about our bed-chamber some chopped leaves of 
arse-smart, a herb most murderous to the numerous light troops 
cantoned in Neapolitan sleeping-rooms ; how balm was good for 
the" bite of scorpions ; how Pliny recommends end-weed for the 
quinsy; — and a thousand other matters touching leaves, herbs, 
trees, flowers, roots, and barks. But I loill tell you that our Am- 
phitryon was light as well as learned, and loved fun as he did 
flowers. He would discourse upon ballets as well as battles ; knew 
all about logarithms and the new opera ; told anecdotes ; remem- 
bered sermons ; and, finally, lighted us to bed, with a Latin quo- 
tation, and a brass candlestick. By daybreak we were all out in 



IMPERIAL DEINKEKS. AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY. 289 

the vicinity of the house, looking for rare plants, with as much 
avidity as though they equalled diamonds in value. We returned 
together to a breakfast exactly adapted to our tastes and capaci- 
ties ; after which, our knapsacks were once more on our shoulders, 
and, having made due acknowledgment for the hospitality received, 
we begged to be permitted to know the name of our entertainer. 

" ' You might call me,' said he, ' the Dalmatian botanist, if I 
particularly cared about maintaining my incognito. But I hope 
we shall meet again ; and, if you ever visit Dresden, come to me, 
and you shall have better fare than I have been able to afford you 
here. Ask for the King of Saxony,' he added, observing our 
inquiring looks ; ' and in the mean time write your names on these 
tablets, and you shall find that in Dresden I have not forgotten the 
night in Dalmatia.' " 

"And did you and the good Frederick AugTistus ever meet 
again ?" 

" Twice," said Harold. " AVe saw one another for a moment, a 
month afterwards, in Zara. He was accompanying the Emperor 
of Austria, followed "by a brilliant staff, to a review, and he gave 
us a smile of recognition as he passed." 

"The second time we met him," added Leopold, "was in the 
gardens of the Nymphenburg, near Munich. He was alone 
amusing himself with feeding the beavers. We spent a very 
agreeable hour with him in exploring that pleasant retreat of the 
Kings of Bavaria ; and, on parting, he repeated his wish that we 
might meet again in Dresden, — a circumstance not very unlikely, 
as we are now on our way to the Sachsische Schweitz." 



13' 



290 TABLE TKAITS. 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 

The ancient people wlio loved tlie juice of the grape, kept in 
grateful remembrance the names of the first planters of vines. 
Bacchus came from India, through Egypt, into Europe ; and he 
and his joyous company made vineyards bloom amid many a 
desert. But the introduction of the vine was not opposed. The 
Chinese accepted gratefully the rosy gift from QEnopia ; and the 
branch was hailed on its passage through Greece, Sicily, and Italy. 
But in Greece the vines were destroyed wherever the order of 
Lycurgus had force; and it was in Athens that, under King 
Cranaus, men first diluted the potent draught with water. The 
gods visited Greece with an inundation in consequence ; but the 
Sicilians, nothing daunted, adopted the temperance that was not 
sanctioned in Olympus. Domitian did for the vines carried into 
Gaul, from Tuscany, what Lycurgus did for those of Lacedaemonia ; 
but Probus restored them to the thirsty Gauls. Numa had taught 
his people to train the vine which Janus had given them ; and, by 
placing the statue of Minerva by the side of that of Bacchus, he 
taught them a lesson which Domitian could not comprehend. He 
did not know how to be merry and wise. 

It was long before the Egyptians acknowledged, by grateful use, 
the excellence of the vine. The Scythians, some of the Persians, 
and the Cappadocians would not drink the delusive draught upon 
any account ; but then these were barbarians. The Cappadocians 
especially not only refused wine, but liberty. When the latter 
was offered them by the Romans, the reply of the water-drinkers 
was, " that they would neither accept liberty nor tolerate it !" It 
is to be remarked, however, that all these people tardily attained 
to a better taste, like the great Hippocrates himself, who, after 
touching on the advisability of mixing wine with water, finally 
decides, like the enthusiastic Athenians, that it is much better to 
take the beverage neat. He thinks that, when grief is at the 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 291 

heart, pure wine is a specific ; and no doubt Ariadne thought so 
too, or she would not have turned to Bacchus after Theseus had 
abandoned her to a short-Kved inconsolabihty. Rome lon^ hon- 
oured Bacchus even as Ariadne did ; and he w^ho stole a bunch of 
grapes from a vineyard incurred the penalty of death. Italy was, 
indeed, proud of her vines and their produce. Of the two hundred 
varieties of wine then known in the world, only fourscore were 
declared to be " excellent ;" and of these fourscore, nearly thirty 
were said to be natives of Italy. The Chian wines, however, 
maintained for ages a marked pre-eminence. It was a vase filled 
with wine of Chios that the poet Ion gave to every Athenian who 
was present at the representation of a tragedy, for which the poet 
was publicly crowned. " Pauper es, tit solent poetce^'' was there- 
fore, evidently, a line that could not be universally applied to the 
poets of Greece. 

They loved old wine, too, did those old people. Wine, as old 
as the years to which ravens are reported to attain, — a century, or 
even two, — was served up at Rome. It was in consistency some- 
thing like the clotted cream of Devonshire. But there was wine 
of a more solid consistency than this. I have elsewhere spoken 
of wine chopped in pieces by an axe, before it could be used. 
This was because of an accident which had happened to the wine ; 
but the Romans had various preparations which were served up 
in lumps ; and we hear of wines being kept in the chimney like 
modern bacon, and presented to the guests " as hard as salt." 
The ancients are also reported to have been able to change red 
wine into white, by means of white of e,gg and bean-flour, shaken 
together with the red wine in a flagon. It would require much 
shaking before a degenerate modern could efi'ect the mutation in 
question. But if Cato could imitate the best Chian by means of 
his own gooseberries, the other feat may hardly be disputed. It 
is certain that the ancients could boldly swallow some questiona- 
ble mixtures. Thus they drank their wine with sea-water, in 
order to stimulate and whip up energies exhausted by being over- 
driven the night before. Myrtle wine, on the other hand, was 



292 TABLE TBAITS. 

copiously drimk at daAvn by those who could not sleep, but who 
could afford to remain in bed, and try to court Nature's soft 
nurse. 

There were Roman ladies who were not born before nerves 
were in fashion. These had their especial drinks, sovereign in 
their effects, to calm a nervous system too sorely excited. The 
most efficacious of these was the " Adynamon^'' or " powerless 
wine ;" that is, powerless to intoxicate, but excellent as an 
invigorator. It consisted simply of a mixture of water and 
white-wort ; and when Julia or Lalage had tremblingly sipped 
thereof, her nerves were so braced, that she could stand by and 
look on while Geta was flogged for an hour. 

On the point of secret drinking, the early Romans were quite 
as particular and more merciless regarding their wives. When 
Micennius detected his wife in the act of " sucking the monkey," 
that is, feloniously imbibing his wdne through a straw at the 
bung-hole, he then and there slew her. Complaint Avas made by 
her friends to Romulus ; but that chief and sole magistrate con- 
fined himself to the remark, that she had been justly served. 
The wine-casks at home were for years afterwards accounted 
sacred by the wives in the absence of their lords. It w^ould 
appear, too, by this incident, that wdne w^as commonly produced 
long before JSFuma introduced ih^ improvement of training the 
vine. There were ladies who were rendered more cautious, but 
not less bold, by the judgment pronounced by Romulus. We 
hear of one caught in the fact by some members of her own 
family, who v/ere so disgusted with her immorality, that to pre- 
serve the respectability of their house, they starved her to death. 
As years wore on. Judges grew more good-natured, and only 
deprived tippling married women of all right in their marriage 
portions. The Empire could hardly have been inaugurated, 
before thirsty ladies adopted a custom th^it had been denied them 
under the Commonwealth. Livia, the consort of Augustus, was 
eighty-two when she died ; and it was her boast that wine alone 
had made her an octogenarian. What wine she drank is not 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 293 

stated. She may have had a head that could bear old Falernian 
undiluted ; but that was not the case with many of her sex. The 
Roman ladies' wine was, generally speaking, little more than a 
sweet tisane, distilled from asparagus or marjoram ; from parsley, 
mint, rue, wild thyme, or pennyroyal. These were sipped at 
breakfast-time; and the hour and the ingredient would seem 
rather to point to ^sculapius than to Bacchus. They were, in 
fact, medicinal drinks. The strong wines were drunk at other 
hours, and these more innocent draughts were swallowed in the 
morning, with reflections as bitter as the beverage.' Wormwood 
wine, too, v/as a favourite morning stimulant with intoxication ; 
and it cannot be denied, that if modern guests were condemned 
to a " Y^wl of salt water " with their wine, the hilarity after dinner 
would not be of a very joyous aspect. Some of the " sea-wines " 
of the Greeks, however, owed their name and reputation chiefly to 
being immersed, in casks, in the ocean. Our Madeira may thus 
be called a " sea-wine," when it has been to the East Indies and 
back for the benefit of its health. 

"Chambertin" was the favourite wine of Napoleon. The 
^'- vinum dulce'''' obtained after drying the grapes in the sun, dur- 
ing three days, and crushing them beneath the feet, in the hottest 
hours of the fourth day, was the drink for which Commodus had 
a predilection. It Avas after draughts of this beverage that lie 
used to fight in the Circus as the "■ Roman Hercules," as proud of 
his performance as Mr. Ducrow, when he used to ride round it in 
the same character. Commodus, too, like the great equestrian, 
was an artist in his way ; but he ruined the managers by the 
exorbitant salaries which he wrung from them, whenever he con- 
descended to appear in the arena ! 

For the games of the Circus, and for bread after the sport was 
over, the Romans have been reproachfully pointed at as alone 
caring. Considering the plight into which they had been 
plunged by their Rulers and Priests, they seem to me to have 
been wise in their sentiment. One circumstance is clear, — that 
they might dip their pennyworth of bread into a deep cup of 



-294: TABLE TRAITS. 

" sack " at the same price. Wine cost but sixpence a gallon, — a 
sufficient quantity for half-a-dozen gentlemen just returned from 
the Circus ; or for half-a-dozen ladies, who had learned to break 
through the total-abstinence principle of the women of the 
Republic. There was much wine to be had for a trifling outlay of 
money. In Greece, it w^as cheaper still. In Athens, wine was 
dear at fourpence per gallon ; and ordinarily, Davus, out on a 
holiday, might get drunk upon four quarts of it, at a halfpenny 
per quart ; but Chremes v/ould nearly flay him alive, if he caught 
him before he was sober. 

I may add, that this w^as the 23rice of wine, that is, of French 
wine, in England, under John. A tun of Rochelle wine cost 
twenty shillings, and it was retailed at fourpence per gallon. But 
taking the value of money into consideration, this was rather a 
high price. 

When Probus restored the vine to the Gauls, he sent cuttings 
of the preciaus plant into Britain ; and many localities in the 
south part of the island produced a very respectable beverage, of 
which the parent stock had no reason to be ashamed. "As sure 
as God is in Gloucestershire !" w^as a common phrase when that 
picturesque county was covered with monasteries ; and many of 
the monastic gardens were famous for their grapes and the liquor 
distilled from them. The little village of Durweston, near Bland- 
ford, in Dorsetshire, was once as remarkable for its peculiar grape 
and its product, as that restricted Rhenish locality, whose grapes 
produce the Lieb Frauenmilch. Of the respective merits of the 
English grapes, I will say nothing. The merits of French wines 
have, however, occupied the attention of rival medical colleges, 
whose professors have shed much ink, and cracked whole legions 
of bottles, in order to discuss, rather than settle, the divers deserts 
of Burgundy and Champagne. The question is yet an undecided 
one, as is also that respecting the devotion of the Gauls to the 
grapes. Arnaud de Villeneuve praises the mediaeval people of 
France, who intoxicated themselves monthly upon hygienic princi- 
ples. While other writers assert, that " in the middle ages, and 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 295 

in the sixteenth century, intoxication was severely punished in 
France." I am the more incHned to believe in the latter asser- 
tion, as the laws against drinking and drinkers, from Charlemagne 
to Francis I., have often been cited ; and they are marked by a 
severity — which Rabelais did not care for, a button ! 

Our own wine-trade with France began after the Norman Con- 
quest, and -was very considerable when our English Kings were 
proprietors of the French wine districts. About the middle of the 
sixteenth centuiy, the maximum price of wine was fixed twelve- 
pence per gallon ; but at this time no one was allowed to have in 
his house a measure that would contain above ten gallons, unless, 
indeed, he were of noble birth, or could expend a hundred marks 
annually. 

Of all French wines, that of Burgundy is the most difficult of 
carriage. Some Burgundies cannot bear it at all; others are 
transported in bottles covered with a cottony paper, or bedded in 
salt. Pure Burgundy exhilarates without intoxicating ; and there 
is not a liver comj)laint in a hogshead of it. It is the alcoholic 
wines that massacre the jecur. 

The Burgundy vineyards were originally in connexion with the 
Burgundian monasteries, and there were no better vignerons than 
the monks. The modern quality of the wine is inferior to its 
ancient reputation, simply because modern proprietors are not 
artistical monks, but mere money-makers. Napoleon adhered to 
the wine as long as he could; but at St. Helena he took to 
Bordeaux, — Chambertin would have lost its best qualities in the 
voyage thither. 

The Emperor was, perhaps, the best judge of his favourite 
Chambertin that France ever could boast of, except, probably, in 
the case of the good Lindsay, of Balcarras, Bishop of Kildare. 
This Prelate long resided at Tours, and was an excellent connois- 
seur in wine, though he modestly used to say, "i/" I know any 
thing, it is the management of turnip crops and mangel-wurzel." 
It is no disparagement of the episcopal bench to say, that many 
of its members could not justifiably make a similar boast. Lord 



296 TABLE TRAITS. 

Brougliam, I believe, used to say, that "if he knew any thing, it 
was, that claret should always be drunk after game." There is 
an imperial authority in favour of Champagne. When the Empe- 
ror Wenceslaus visited France in the fourteenth century, to nego- 
ciate with Charles YI., it was impossible ever to get him sober to 
a conference. " It was no matter," he said ; " they might decide 
as they liked, and he would drink as he liked ; and thus both par- 
ties would be on an equality." There is something curious in the 
caprices of Champagne ; particularly of the vin mousseux, or effer- 
vescing wine. In the same cellar, the same wine, all similarly 
placed, will mousser in some bottles, and not in others. It will 
even, poured from the same bottle, mousser in some glasses into 
which it is poured, while in others it will fall as heavily placid as 
oil. In warm weather, however, a great Champagne cellar is a 
very lively place ; so lively, that it is unsafe to walk through the 
serried hosts of bottles, without a wire mask over the face. 

There are one or two sorts of French wine which are considered 
to be improved by letting a small portion of the stalk be trodden 
in with the grape. But, probably, in the selection of the grape, 
there is no where such care taken, as in the matter of imperial 
Tokay. The grapes are selected with the greatest care ; sometimes 
a second selection is made from the first selected lot. ISTo grape 
is chosen that it is not perfectly sound. The resulting wine is of 
a highly delicious flavour ; but I need not add, that the general 
public know but very little about it. To them is vouchsafed the 
brewage from the damaged grape, or the distillation of the refuge 
of the first grape. The product is an acid one, resembling mode- 
rately good Ehine wine ; but it is not Tokay. 

" Old Wortley Montague " was a great drinker of Tokay. He 
lived to the patriarchal age of eighty-three. Gray, writing of him, 
says, that it was not mere avarice, and its companion, abstinence, 
that kept him alive so long. He imported his own wine from 
Hungary, in greater quantity than he could use, and he sold the 
overplus, — drinking himself a half-pint every day, — for any price 
he chose to set upon it. It was a fashionable wine with the drin- 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 297 

kers of the last century. Walpole records its being offered at a 
supper given by Miss Chudleigh to the Duke of Kingston, her 
then " protector." " At supper she offered him Tokay, and told 
him she believed he would find it good." The entertainment was 
splendid, and untidy. "The supper was in two rooms, and very 
fine ; and on all the sideboards, and even on the chairs, were pyra- 
•mids and troughs of strawberries and cherries ; you would have 
thought she was kept by Yertumnus !" 

Our ancient acquaintance, " mustard," was originally raised to 
the character of " wine," in common with some other of the seeds 
used at ancient tables. Our warm friend mustard was the mustum 
ardenSj or " hot wine." It was held as good for persons of bilious 
temperament, and as being more beneficial in summer than in 
winter. Coriander was used in the same season. It was mixed 
with vinegar, and poured over meat to preserve its freshness. 
There are some men who faint at the smell of linseed. A bread 
made therefrom was once, however, readily eaten by various Euro- 
pean and Asiatic people. Cakes made of it were placed before 
the altars of gods, — men making willing sacrifice of what they 
accounted as of small value. Similar sacrifices are made daily 
even now ; only they are not in the form of aniseed cakes. '', 

It is said of the Arabs, that they manufactured an intoxicating 
wine from linseed. This beverage was worthy of being served 
with that strange dish at dessert, — fried hempseed, — a dish that 
would have been appropriate enough at a highwayman's last sup- 
per, the night before he rode to Tyburn. 

It used to be said of old, that wine was a sympathetic liquor ; 
and this is alluded to by more than one writer. Sir Kenelm Digby 
in his " .Dissertation on the Cure of Wounds," makes a singular 
remark with respect to wine. " The wine-merchants observe every 
where, (where there is wine,) that during the season the wines are 
in the flower, the wines in the cellar make a kind of fermentation, 
and percolate forth a little white lee (which I think they call ' the 
mother of the wine ') upon the surface of the wine, which con- 
tinues in a kind of disorder till the flower of the vines be fallen ; 
13* 



298 TABLE TEAITS. 

and then this agitation being ceased, all the wine returns to the 
same state as it was in before." 

It was a custom with the ancients to swallow, to the health of 
their mistresses, as many cups or glasses as there were letters in 
her name. To this custom Martial refers : — 

''- McBvia sex cyathis^ septem Justina bibatur, 
Quinque Lycas, Lyde quatuor, Ida tribus : 
Omnis ab infuso numeretur arnica Falerno?'' 

It became us, as a more mechanical people, to drink upon pegs 
rather than letters ; the peg-tankards were said to be the invention 
of King Edgar. The two-gallon measure had eight pegs; and 
the half pint, from peg to peg, was deemed a fitting draught for 
an honest man ; but as the statute, or custom, did not define how 
often the toper might be permitted to indulge in this measure, 
people of thirsty propensities got rather more inebriated than they 
had dared to be previously. As the half-pint was roughly set 
down as the maximum of their draught, it was a point of honour 
with them never to drink less, — and to drink to that extent as 
often as opportunity offered. The Council of London (Archbishop 
Anselm's "Canons," a.d. 1102) expressly warned the Clergy 
against the perils of peg-drinking ; but the same Council looked 
upon perukes as being quite as perilous as these pegged half-pints, 
and denounced wigs with as much intensity as tankards, — and to 
about as much purpose. Karloman understood the Ecclesias- 
tics better; at least, if traditionary history bo worthy of any 
respect. 

Among the legends of the Rhine connected with my present 
subject of wine, there is one which is worth mentioning. The 
great Karloman, who loved good liquor, bequeathed to the brother- 
hood of Monks at Rheinfield a marvellous and covetable butt of 
wine, which had not only the merit of being of first-rate quality, 
but which never decreased, though it was continually running at 
the spigot ! This wine was for the use of the brethren ; but the 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF Vv^INE. 299 

good Emperor also left a sura of money whicli he desired should 
be spent in treating visitors to the monastery with good Rhenish 
wine. When a weary traveller claimed the hospitality of the 
Monks, he w^as immediately conducted to an inner apartment. 
Here he was invested with the collar of Karloman, and gravely 
informed that, it being necessary that he should be baptized, he 
had only to say whether he preferred that the ceremony should 
be performed with wine or wdth water. K, like an honest fellow, 
he selected wine, he was gently constrained to swallow three 
bumpers of Muscatel. He was then crowned with a parcel-gilt 
coronet, and so became installed one of the jolly Knaves of St. 
Goar. There were some privileges attached to this dignity; 
among others, was the right to fish on the summit of the Lurley 
Berg, where there is no water ; and of hunting on the sand-banks 
of the Rhine, where there is not safe footing for a sparrow. The 
poor temperate Avight, on the other hand, who preferred the 
modest medium of water for the ceremony of his baptism, was 
proclaimed a blind heathen, and was immediately drenched to the 
skin, from outpouring buckets of water that were showered upon 
him in all directions. Such was the solemnity of the Hansel, as 
instituted by Karloman. This Emperor's affection for the Rhine 
and its vicinity was as strong as that of an old gastronomic Eng- 
lish Bishop for his native island. The episcopal attachment is 
exemplified in the story of the Prelate's last moments, when his 
faithfiil servant John endeavoured to encourage him. " Be com- 
forted, my Lord," said John : " your Lordship is going to a better 
place." " Ah, John !" said the Bishop, " there is no place like old 
England !" 

There was a practice among the Romans with regard to wine, 
which should win the respect of all our Inns of Court. All law 
business was suspended during vintage time. " >Sa?*e," says Minu- 
cius Felix, " et ad vindemiam ferice judiciorum curam relaxave- 
Tunt ;" and this was no poor holiday : it was the Long Vacation 
of the Roman Bar, extending, as the Rev. Hubert Ashton Holden 
remarks, in his admirable edition of the " OcMvius^'' from August 



800 TABLE TEAITS. 

22nd to October IStTi. And here let me remark, parenthetically, 
how much preferable it would be to make a school-book of the 
" Octavius " of Minucius Felix, so rich in early Christian informa- 
tion, and so pure in its Latinity, rather than pursue the old course 
of letting boys read Ovid and similar authors. The Abbe Gaume, 
in his " Ver Royigeur^'' traces all the evils by which society is 
afflicted, to the study of erotic Latin and Greek authors. The 
Abbe rushes from one extreme into its opposite, and wishes to 
confine our sons to the mawkish Latinity of the Lives of the 
Saints, and the Pastorals (so unlike the Eclogues) of Bishops. 
The works of Minucius Felix just occupies the safe medium of the 
two remote points, — erotic Heathenism, and Monkish mendacity, 
told with much violation of grammar. It is a book that ought 
to be on the list of works to be studied in every locality devoted 
to the education of " ingenious youth." 

It is hardly necessary to write of the effects of wine on bodily 
economy. They are too familiarly known. There is an old adage 

that — 

" He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober, 
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October ; 
But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow, 
Lives as he ought to do, and dies a good fellow." 

This is poor poetry, worse sentiment, and deadly counsel. Half 
the evils that torture men arise from intemperance ; and, next to 
excess in alcohol, immoderation in wine is the most fatal practice 
to which humanity can bind itself slave. An Arab says of his 
horse, that the horse's belly is the measure of its corn. Men are 
too apt to allow a similar metage with respect to themselves in 
the matter of wine. It were safer to remember that we cannot 
drink too little, and that we soon may be drinking too much. 
Panard very justly says, — 

" Se piquer d^etre grand buveur, 
Est un dbus qui je deplore. 
Fuyons ce titre peu fiatteur ; 
Cest un honneur qui deshonore. 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE. 301 

Quand on boit trop, on s^assoupit, 

Et Von tombe en dclire : 
BuvoJis pour avoir de Vesprit, 

Et non pour le detruire." 

As good advice, more eloquently delivered, is given by our own 
Herbert, a poet next to Shakespeare for felicity of expresssion. 
Our reverend minstrel and monitor says, — 

" Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame 

When once it is within thee, but before 
May'st rule it as thou list ; and pour the shame, 

Which it would pour on thee, upon the floor. 
It is most just to throw that on the ground. 
Which v/ould throw me there, if I keep the round." 

And again : — 

" If reason move not, gallants, quit the room ; 

(All in a shipwreck shift their several way ;) 
Let not a common ruin thee entomb ; 

Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay, 
Stay at the third cup, or forego the place : 
Wine, above all things, does God's stamp deface." 

This is admirable counsel, logic, and theology. The people 
who at least stood in need of such a triad of excellent aids to 
good living were the Egyptians, at that particular period of their 
career when they confined themselves to drinking 

" Beer small as comfort, dead as charity." 

And this may naturally lead us to look in, for a moment, on 
both the ancient and the modern Egyptians, when seated at table. 
But, previous to doing so, there is a little philological matter I. 
would fain settle, as far as so indifferent an authority may pre- 
sume to do so, and which may interest, not merely wine-bibbers, 
but etymologists, and zealous correspondents to "I^otes and 
Queries." It may be very briefly discussed. 



302 TABLE TEAITS. 

I have noticed, in another page, the fact that nearly all our old- 
fashioned drinking phrases are but corruptions of foreign terms. 
A " carouse," for instance, is derived from " gar aus^'' " altogether 
empty," sufficiently indicative of what a reveller was to do with 
his full glass. There is one — a rather vulgar term — of the origin 
of which, however, I have never heard any account. But I think 
I may have discovered it in a little German poem, by Pfarrius, 
called " Ber Trunk aus dem Stiefel^'' and which, thus roughly 
done into English, may serve to show 

• 
THE ORIGIN OF "BOOSEY." 

In the E,heingraf s hall were of Knights a score, 
And they drained their goblets o'er and o'er, 
And the torches they flung a lurid glow 
On the Knights who were drinking there below. 

"Ho, ho!" said the Rheingraf, '-'Sir Knights, I find, 
Our courier has left a boot behind ; 
He who can empty it off at a breath, — 
The Hufflesheim village is his till death." 

Then laughing, he filled the boot to the rim, 
Till the bright red wine flowed over the brim 5 
And said, as he mark'd their sparkling eyes, — 
'' Good luck to you, Knights — you know the prize !' 

Then Johann von Sponheim sat silent by, 
But pushed his neighbour to rise and try ; 
And Meinhart, his neighbour, could nothing do 
But scowl at the boot, and sit silent too. 

Old Florsheim, he nervously stroked his beard ; 
And Kunz von Stromberg spoke never a word ; 
And even the giant Chaplain stared 
At the monster boot, as though he were scared. 

Then Boos von Waldeck did loudly call,' — 

" Here, hand me that thimble !" and '•' Health to all !" 

And then, in one breath, to the very last drain, 

He drank, and fell back on his seat again, 



A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WIKE. 303 

Aud said, '• 0, Sir Rheingraf, it were my mind, 
Had the fellow his other boot left behind. 
To empty that, too, at a breath ; and take 
For my prize Norheim village, near the lake." 

Then loud laughed they all at Waldeck's good jest, — 
Of all landless tipplers, till then, the best ; 
But the Rheingrat, he kept his knightly word, — 
And Boos of the Boot was Hufflesheim's lord ! 

If therein "be not the origin of " boosey," why, let the lexico- 
graphers look to it. But my readers will have had enough of these 
uncouth names. I have now to introduce them to hosts with 
names equally unmusical ; but, luckily, we have now to do more 
with acts than appellations, and therewith pass we to golden 
Egypt, and her well-spread boards. I will only first add another 
word respecting spirits, as a beverage. All authorities are agreed, 
that reason has no more deadly foe than alcohol. The effects of 
the latter are well described by Dr. A\^inslow, whom we ha^^e pre- 
viously quoted in the matter of mental dietetics, — a gentleman 
who might, with justice, have given a plump denial to the remark 
of Macbeth, had it been addressed to Dr. Winslow, when the royal 
patient uncivilly told his medical adviser, " Thou canst not minister 
to a mind diseased." Dr. Winslow. says : " The alcoholic elements 
introduced into the blood, and brought into immediate contact 
with the tissues of different organs, will derange the functions 
which they are severally destined to perform ; and the amount and 
character of the mischief so produced will correspond with, and 
be modified by, the peculiarities of their individual organic struc- 
ture. With these facts before us, when we consider the delicate 
structure of tbe brain, as revealed to us by the progress of micro- 
scopic anatomy, we must be prepared for the physical and mental 
derangement which must arise, either from the alcohol, itself, or its 
elements, being brought into direct contact with the vesicular neu- 
rine or granular matter entering into the composition of its white 
and. grey substance. According to our most recent physiological 
views, the vesicular matter is the source of nervous power, and 



304 TABLE TEAITS. 

associated, as tlie material instrument of the mind, with all its 
manifestations, whetlier in the simple exercise of perception, or 
the more complicated operations of the thinking principle. We 
are then to conceive the simple or organic structure dedicated to 
this high function brought into contact with irritating and noxious 
elements. The result must obviously be a disturbance in the mani- 
festations of the mind proportioned to the organic derangements 
so produced ; and without, therefore, taking a materialistic view 
of the changes which take place, the obliteration of some, and 
the derangement of other of the intellectual faculties, are hereby 
satisfactorily accounted for. It is certain, that when the circula- 
tion in the grey matter of the convolutions is retarded by conges- 
tion, or accelerated by unwonted stimulation, there is a corres- 
ponding state of stupor or mental activity, amounting even to 
deKrium, produced ; and, indeed, it has been suggested, by some 
of our most eminent physiologists, that every idea of the mind is 
associated with a corresponding change in some part, or parts, of 
the vesicular surface." And if they who sit, "amid bumpers 
brightening," could only hold this truth in sober memory, there 
would be less imbibed at night, and more sunshine in their souls 
on the morrow. And now let us pass to the cradle of wisdom, 
the ancient Misraim, where, despite the national boast, folly was, 
perhaps, as much deified as in any locality upon earth. 

Yes, let us now to ancient Egypt, where, as good old Herbert 
so finely expresses it, — 

" Men did sow 
Gardens of gods, which every year did grow 
Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost 
Who for a god clearly a sallet lost I 
0, what a thing is man devoid of grace, 
Adoring garlic with a humble face ! 
Begging his food of that which he may eat, 
Starving the while he worshippeth his meat I 
Who makes a root a god, how low is he, 
If God and man be served infinitely ! 
What wretchedness can give him any roomj 
"WTiose house is fflul, while he adores his broom?" 



TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 305 



THE TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN 
EGYPTIANS. • 

If neither the graye of the Pharaohs nor physiology will, nor 
Dr. Hincke nor Chevalier Bunsen can, reveal to us the secret of 
the origin of the Egyptians, we, at all events, know that they 
were majestically-minded with respect to the table. The science 
of living was well understood by them ; and the science of killing- 
was splendidly rewarded ; seeing that the soldiery, besides liberal 
pay, allowance of land, and exemption from tribute, received daily 
five pounds of bread, two of meat, and a quart of wine. With 
such rations they ought not to have been beaten by the Persians, 
when the latter had so degenerated, that their almost sole 
national boast was, that they could drink deeper than any other 
men, without 'seeming half so drunk. The Egyptians, too, were 
tolerably stout hands, and heads to boot, at the wine-pot ; and 
there v/ere few among even their Kings who, like the King of 
Castile, would have choked of thirst, because the grand butler 
was not by to hand the cup. 

The pulse and fruits of Egypt, the fish of the Nile, the corn 
waving in its fields, which needed neither sun nor rain to exhibit 
productiveness, — all these were the envy, and partly the support, 
of surrounding nations. The corn was especially prized ; and a 
reported threat of St. Athanasius to obstruct the importation of 
Egyptian corn into Constantinople, threw the Emperor Constantine 
into a fit of mingled fright, fever, and fury. 

An Egyptian Squire commonly possessed a hundred or two 
cows and oxen, three hundred rams, four times that number of 
goats, and five times that number of swine, for the supply of his 
own little household. The apartments in the mansions of these 
gentlemen were beautifully painted, and were furnished with 
tables, chairs, and couches which have supplied models for the 
upholstery of modern times. They were lovers of music, and wil- 



306 TABLE TEAITS. 

lingly suspended .conversation at their feasts, in order to listen to 
the " concord of sweet sounds." 

Cleopatra was but a febrile creature ; but she sat down with 
good appetite, and love in her eyes, to the banquet given by 
Antony, at which fifteen whole boars smoked upon the board. 
But Cleopatra, frail and fragile, like many thin people, ate hear- 
tily ; and when she herself treated Caesar, it was with such a ban- 
quet that slaves died to procure it, and the guests who were pre- 
sent, wondered at the rarities of which they partook. There was 
every thing there that gastronomy could think of, except mutton, 
— an exception in favour of the divine Ammon with the ram-like 
head. I believe that even roast-beef and plum-pudding were not 
lacking ; for these delicacies were popular in Thebes, as was broiled 
and salted goose, with good brown stout, strong barley- wine, to cheer 
the spirits and assist digestion. 

Excessively proud, too, were the old Egyptians of their culinary 
ability. When the Egyptians, under their King, attacked Ochus, 
Sovereign of Persia, the former were thoroughly beaten, and 
their Monarch was captured. Ochus treated him as courteously 
as the Black Prince did John of France, and invited him 
to his own table, at the simplicity of which the Eg5^tian laughed 
outright. " Prince," said the uncourteous captive, " if you would 
really like to know how happy Kings should feed, just let my 
cooks — if you have caught the rascals, as you have me — prepare 
you a true Egyptian supper." Ochus consented, enjoyed himself 
amazingly at the banquet, and, then, turning to his Egyptian pri- 
soner, punished him by saying, " Why, what a sorry fool art thou, 
whose ambition has lost thee such repasts, and reduced thee to 
henceforth envy, as thou wilt, the moderate meals that suffice 
us honest Persians !" The implied threat was worse than the sen- 
timent. 

The dinner-table of the Egyptians was sometimes covered with 
a linen cloth imitating palm-leaves, sometimes left uncovered. 
Plates and knives, but not forks, were in common use. In place 
of the latter were short-handled spoons of gold, silver, ivory, tor- 



TABLE OF THE AXCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 307 

toise-shell, or alabaster. The dining-table wa# circular : orna- 
mented rolls of wheaten bread were placed before each guest ; and 
supplies of the same were heaped in gay-looMng baskets on the 
side-board, where also were kept the wine, the water, ewer, and 
napkins, which slaves, fair or swarthy, Greek or ISTegro, were ready 
to present at the bidding of the guests. 

Previous to sitting down to the repast, the company put a spur 
to their appetite, and a cordial to their stomach, in the shape of 
pungent vegetables or strong liqueurs. Glasses for beer, decan- 
ters and goblets for wine, appear among the ancient pictorial 
illustrations of Egyptian table-furniture. It would seem, too, from 
the position of those at table, that they rose from their chairs to 
challenge each other to drink, to propose toasts or healths, or to 
inflict speeches upon the vexed ears of compulsory listeners. 

In these " counterfeit presentments '' of Egyptian life may be 
seen the entire science of epicureanism, and its practical applica- 
tion put into action. The poultry-yard, the slaughter-houses, the 
markets and the kitchen, are so graphically depicted, that we see 
at once, that the art of making life comfortable was one most pro- 
foundly respected by iho, ancient and mysterious people. The 
selecting, purchasing, and killing are vividly portrayed. The 
cooking is carried in a large bronze caldron, on a tripod, over a 
fire, which is stirred by an under-cook, with a poker that may 
have been bought any day at Rippon and Burton's. The butcher 
is there, too, in order decently to dissect the fowls; and our 
ancient friend carries before him the identical steel for sharpening 
his knife, whi(3h may be seen any day hanging from the waists of 
the butchers of London. There is a pastrycook, also, in one of 
these " ci^-il monuments of Egypt," who is carrying a tray of tart- 
lets on his head ; and to the tray is suspended the inscription signi- 
fying " one thousand," which probably means, that this " Birch, 
Pyramid-place, Cairo," drives such a trade, that he makes and sells 
a thousand tarts or a thousand varieties of them daily. 

A dinner /resco, in a tomb at Thebes, shows us an entertain- 
ment given by a naval officer to some of his professional brethren. 



308 TABLE TP.AITS. 

This fresco is described as being in compartments, and, perhaps, 
the most cm'ioiis is that in which "you see on one side the 
arrival of an aristocratic guest, in his chariot, attended by a train 
of running footmen, one of whom hastens forward to announce his 
arrival by a knock at the door, sufficient to satisfy the critical 
ear, and rouse the somnolent obesity, of the sleepiest and fattest 
hall-porter in Grosvenor-square. The other compartment presents 
you with a couj^-d^oeil of the poultry-yard, shambles, pantry, and 
kitchen ; and is completed by a side view of a novel incident. A 
grey-headed mendicant, attended by his faithful dog, and who 
might pass for Ulysses at his palace-gate, is receiving, from the 
hands of a deformed, but charitable, menial, a bull's head, and a 
draught of that beer, for the invention of which we are beholden to 
the Thebans." 

The story of Mycerinus, the Egyptian King, is grandly told by 
Mr. Arnold, in his joopular volume of poems ; and, succinctly, by 
Herodotus. An incident of the story connects it with our sub- 
ject. Mycerinus was jDersecuted by the Gods for rendering Egypt 
happy, instead of oppressing .it, like his predecessors, and as the 
oracles had declared it should be oppressed for many years to 
come. In punishment for such impious piety, as his offence may 
be called, poor Mycerinus was told by the oracle at Buto, that he 
should live only six years longer. " When Mycerinus heard this, 
seeing that his sentence was now pronounced against him, he 
ordered a great number of lamps to be made, and having lighted 
them, whenever night came on, he drank and enjoyed himself, 
never ceasing night or • day, roaming about the marshes and 
groves, wherever he could hear of places most suited for pleasure ; 
and he had recourse to this artifice for the purpose of convicting 
the oracle of falsehood, that by turning the nights into days, he 
might live twelve years intead of six." Poor fool ! He probably 
succeeded in his object, but after a sorry fashion. It may be good 
poetry to say that — 

" The best of all our ways 
To lengthen all our days 
Is to take a few hours from night, my dear ;" 



TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODEEN EGYPTIANS. 309 

but it is bad in principle, and universally unsuccessful in practice. 
A recent describer of his travels in Egypt bas said, that nothing- 
is so easy as to show that the Egyptians gave jovial banquets 
within the sepulchral hall of tombs. I think that nothing would 
be so difficult as to prove this. The nearest approach to it would 
be the case of the skeleton that was carried about at Egyptian 
banquets, the bearer, at the same time, warning the guests that, 
eat, drink, and laugh as they might, to that •' complexion they 
must come" at last. The assertion, however, was probably made, 
in part, to excuse a barbarous festival, at which the writer was 
present, in the tombs Eilythyias. The locale was one of the huge 
halls, whose colossal columns serve to support the huger mountain 
that is above. The dinner, we are told, was laid out between the 
columns, with strings of small lamps suspended in festoons over 
head. 

The ci^dlized and Christian ladies and gentlemen who were the 
guests at this feast, broke up the coffins of the pagan and barba- 
rian Kings and Queens, in order to procure wood to boil their 
vegetables ! They laughed, joked, and sang joyous songs, and 
wondered what the buried majesty of Misraim would say, could it 
burst its cerements, and see northern men of unknown tongues 
drinking Champagne at its august feet. And if, for a moment, a 
reflecting- guest contrasted the savage revelry with the ensigns 
hung out by the King of Terrors to intimate his irresistible 
dominion over the company, — why, reflection was soon banished 
by the appearance of the Awalim and Ghawazi girls, whom strong 
coffee and more potent brandy had primed for their lascivious 
dancing. " Father Abraham ! what these Christians are !" 

These tombs are full of instruction to those who can read them. 
They show us that the chief butler and cook — the " keeper of the 
drinks," and the Prince {sar) of his cooks — were probably 
Princes of the blood of Pharaoh. In all pictorial representa- 
tions of banquets, it is the eldest son who hands the viands to his 
father, the eldest daughter to the mother. The bill of fare of the 
trimestrial banquet of the dead, held in the noble hall of the 



310 TABLE TKAITS. 

tomb of Nalarai at Benihassan, is still extant. It is as long as 
that of a score of Lord Mayors' ; and hundreds of men were fed 
from what remained. All the retainers of Nahrai, who was a 
Prince in Egypt a full century before the time of Joseph, were 
buried in the vaults beneath the hall ; and every one who could 
claim kindred with them had a right to partake of the feast. 
The manner of service appears to have been after this fashion: — 
The youngest children of the house received the viands from the 
cooks, and those children passed them on to the elder, until they 
reached the first-born, who placed the dish .at the feet of his sire, 
by whom a portion was cut off, which the daughters, according to 
their age, transferred from one to the other till it reached the 
separate table of their mother. All remained standing, at these 
festival-dinners, until the two seniors of the house had finished 
the first dishes of the repast. Portions from these were then 
served to the children, when the whole party sat down together ; 
the children eating of the remains of the first dish, while " the 
governor " and his lady partook of the integral second ; and so 
on, through a long service. On the wall of a tomb at Ghizeh, — 
that of Eimei, one of the Princes of the Saphis, — the bill of fare 
dkects ninety-eight dishes to be placed, at once, on the table, at 
the fortnightly banquets which glad survivors held in honour of 
the departed, who appear to me always to enjoy an immense 
advantage over those whom they leave behind them. 

But now let us look in upon the modern Egyptian. If he be 
the master of a house, while he is at ablutions and prayers, his 
wife is making his cofiee ; and it is to be hoped that she is allowed 
the privilege alluded to in the Augustinian sentiment, orat qui 
labor at. The cup of coff'ee and pipe, taken early, generally 
suffice the Egyptian till noon, at which hour comes the actual 
breakfast, usually consisting of bread, butter, eggs, cheese, clotted 
cream, or curdled milk, with, perhaps, a thin pastry, saturated 
with butter, folded like a pancake, and sprinkled with sugar. A 
dish of horse-beans (terrific dish !) sometimes adorns the table. 
They have been slowly simmering through a whole night in an 



TABLE OF THE AI^CIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 311 

earthen vessel, buried up to the neck in the hot ashes of an oven ; 
and the sauce for this indigestible dish is linseed oil or butter, 
and, perhaps, a little lime-juice. Those to whom butter is difficult 
of procuring, or to whom good dinners are rarities, often make a 
meal, and are content, upon dry bread dipped in a mixture of salt, 
pepper, wild marjoram, with various other herbs, pungent seeds, 
and a quantity of chick-peas. The bread is dipped into this 
ragout, and so eaten 

The supper is the principal meal in Egypt. The cooking is 
especially for this repast ; and what remains is appropriated for 
the next day's dinner, despite the apophthegm of Boileau, that — 

" Un dmer rechauffe ne vaiit jamais rien,'^ 

It is only an amiable paterfamilias that dines with his wives and 
children ; and, in truth, where the wife appears in the plural num- 
ber, the husband can hardly expect a quiet meal. The washing 
before eating is almost of universal observation. The table is a 
round tray placed low, so that the squatters on the ground may 
conveniently eat thereat. Bread and limes are placed on the 
tray. The bi-ead is round, as among the ancient Egyptians, and 
often serves as plate. The spoons, too, are of the materials I have 
named in speaking of the older nation. The dishes are of tinned 
copper or china ; and several are put upon the table at one time. 
Among the Turks, only one dish appears at a time. Twelve per- 
sons, with one knee on the ground and the other (the right) 
raised, may sit round a tray three feet in diameter. Each guest 
tucks up his right sleeve, and prepares for his work, after imitat- 
ing the master of the house in uttering a low Bisinillan, " In the 
name of God." The host sets the second example of commencing 
to eat ; and the guests again follow the good precedent. Knives 
and forks are not used ; spoons only for food like soups and rice. 
The thumb and two forefingers are the instruments otherwise 
employed ; and they are employed delicately enough. Generally, 
a piece of bread is taken, doubled together, and dipped into the 
dish, so as to enclose the morsel of meat which the guest designs 



812 TABLE TKAITS. 

for himself, or, if it be a savoury bit, and he be courteous, intended 
for presentation to liis neighbour. The food is suited to such 
practices. It consists of stewed meats, with vegetables of endless 
variety, or of small morsels of mutton or lamb, roasted on 
skewers : clarified butter compensates for want of fat in the meat. 
A fowl is summarily torn asunder by two hands, either of the 
same person, or the right hands of two guests. Dexterous 
fellows, like our first-rate carvers, will "joint" a fowl with one 
hand. The Arabs do not use the left hand at all at table, because 
it is used for unclean purposes. The disjointing is easily done ; 
and even a whole lamb, stuffed with pistachio nuts, may be pulled 
to pieces much more easily than we divide a chicken. Water- 
melons, sliced, set to cool, and watched, lest serpents should 
approach, and poison the dish by their breath, generally form, 
when in season, a part of an Egyptian meal, — a meal which 
usually closes with a dish of boiled rice, mixed with butter, salt, 
and pepper ; but occasionally this dish is followed by a bowl of 
water, with, raisins that have been boiled in it, and sugar added, 
with a little rose-water, to give it an odour of refinement. A bot- 
tle of six-year-old port is preferable. 

As soon as each person has satisfied his appetite, he ceases, mur- 
murs, " Praise be to God !" drinks his sweetened water, rises, and 
goes his way. They who drink wine, do it in private, or with 
confidential friends, call it " rum " to save their orthodoxy ; and if a 
visitor call while this process is going on, the ready servant informs 
him ihat his master is abroad or in the harem. Sweet drinks and 
sherbets, approved by the Law and the Prophet, are in common 
use, and pipes and prayer end " the well-spent day." 

Egyptian women have some little fancies connected with the 
table that may be mentioned. In order to achieve that propor- 
tion of obesity which constitutes the beautiful, they eat mashed 
beetles, and they chew frankincense and laudanum, to perfume the 
breath. The Egyptian peasantry live upon the very sparest of 
diets, not often being able to procure even rice. They, like the 
Bedouins, are, however, remarkable for strength and health ; but 



TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 313 

an Egyptian or Bedouin diet would not produce the same results 
in an English climate. 

It will have been observed, that in Egypt each man says his 
own " grace," before and after meat, for himself. The same cus- 
tom prevails in Servia. At table, instead of one person asking 
for a blessing on the food, each individual expresses, in his own 
words^ (an improvement on the Egyptian plan,) his gratitude to 
the Supreme Being. In drinking, the toast or sentiment of the 
Servian is, " To the glory of God !" and a very excellent sentiment, 
only the Servian is apt to get very drunk over it. The Servian 
qualification for a chairman at a convivial party is, that he should 
be able to deliver an extempore prayer ; and a very good qualifi- 
tion, provided it be not a mere formality, and that the spirit of 
prayer be the strongest spirit there. The combination, however, 
of Collects and conviviality reminds me of some strange parties at 
old-fashioned houses in our provincial towns, where comic songs 
are followed by discussions on the Millennium, and seed-cake and 
ginger wine season both. 

I have spoken more of the achievements of Egyptian cookery, 
than of the quality of the cooks. The fact is, that it is far more 
easy to speak decidedly of the former, than of the latter. Mr. St. 
John describes the Arab cooks in Egypt as being great gastrono- 
mers, and serving up " their dishes in a style which could not have 
displeased Elagabalus himself!" Mr. Lane equally lauds their ' 
excellence, and the delicacy of the manner of eating. Herr Werne, 
on the other hand, — and he is a man of wide experience in this 
matter, — speaks very differently both of Turkish eating and Arab 
cooking in Egypt. Werne, indeed, speaks of the remote district 
of Bellad Sudam, rather than of Cairo and Alexandria; but his 
observations have an extensive application, nevertheless. He is 
disgusted with the general want of cleanliness ; and he remarks, 
that " the cooks are dirtier in themselves, and more filthy in their 
dress, than any other class of people." The dirty Arab cook is in 
a dirty kitchen, a dirty pipe ever in his mouth, and with the dir- 
tiest of hands manipulating savoury preparations for the mouths 
14 



314 TABLE TRAITS. 

of his masters. He knows little more than how to boil or roast 
meat, boil beans, and prepare vegetable dishes. Even the female 
slaves of the harem, who act as cooks to their lords, are remark- 
able for imcleanliness. " All the meat to be used for the dinner is 
sodden together in one huge caldron, and separated for arrange- 
ment in various dishes, all of which partake of general flavour, 
having been cooked together, and there is but scant nourishment 
in any of them." The vegetables are described by him as being 
wretchedly cooked, and saturated with bad butter, or the water in 
which they have been boiled. The dishes are not larger than our 
plates ; the plates, when such are used by the guests, about the 
size of our saucers : but " each guest at once plunges his hand 
into any or every dish that pleases him, and gropes about till he 
gets hold of the best bits, pulls them out, and swallows them. 
Very often a bite is only taken from the piece thus seized on, and 
the rest returned to the dish ; but, in spite of the clean treatment 
it has undergone, it is again soon seized hold of by another, and, 
perchance, again similarly handled, till all is finally bolted. The 
Turks eat incredibly rapidly, as they bolt everything, and keep 
cramming into the mouth more, ere the former mouthful has 
been swallowed ; while a smacking of lips, and licking of sauce- 
dripping fingers, succeed, and proclaim their pleasure in the meal. 
Bread is generally to be found on the table, but neither salt, oil, 
vinegar, nor pe|)per ; although, when they dine with Europeans, 
they show no dislike to highly-seasoned dishes or strong drinks. 
Although these dishes are numerous, they contain but little. If 
there are many courses, or more dishes than the table will hold at 
one time, the entertainer is ever busied making signs to the attend- 
ants which are to be removed ; and not seldom the guest finds,' 
that the very dish he was about to help himself from is carried 
off from under his very nose. The Pasha used often to amuse 
himself by playing tricks on his guests, by ordering off, with the 
utmost rapidity, those dishes he saw their longing eyes fixed on, 
ere their outstretched hands could convey any portion of them 
into their watering mouths. At first, in spite of the pilau, we 



TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS. 316 

never were quick enough to get suflScient to eat, not having been 
brought up to bolt our food ; and that the Turks are so quickly- 
satisfied, and by so little, is wholly owing to this bolting of their 
food, is undeniable ; and this also produces the repeated eructa- 
tions they so loudly and joyfully give vent to, as proving their high 
health and vigour." 

The Turks and Arabs of Eg3q^)t " chaw," carrying their quid 
between the front teeth and upper lip. The blacks of Gesira mix 
tobacco and nitron, dissolving the latter in an infusion of the 
former. This they call " bucca ;" and they take a mouthful of it 
at a time, which they keep rinsing over their teeth and gums, for, 
perhaps, a quarter of an hour, before they eject it. They have 
" bucca " parties, as we have tea parties ; and then is the circle in 
the very highest state of enjoyment, — imbibing, gurgling, gargling, 
and ejecting, — and not a word uttered, except at the close, when 
the guests return thanks to their host " for this very delightful 
evening !" 

Egypt was the locality wherein the saints of old especially shone 
with respect to their table arrangements, or their contempt for 
them ; and these gentlemen fairly claim a due share of notice at 
our hands. So, now " for the desert !" 



316 TABLE TRAITS. 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 



Fasting, under certain circumstances, at certain seasons, and 
for certain ends, is undoubtedly sanctified by apostolical recom- 
mendation. The earlier fathers, however, say little on the subject. 
Clement of Alexandria mentions weekly fasts at Easter ; and Ter- 
tullian, in an article especially recommending the observation, 
bitterly bewails that it has fallen into a general disuse. The 
Church of Alexandria also ordained a fast on Wednesdays and 
Fridays; on Wednesday, because on that day Christ was betrayed; 
on Friday, because on that day he was crucified. In Alexandria 
too arose the saying, that the aspen-tree shook because it was the 
tree from which the wood for the cross was taken. The fasting 
generally consisted in abstaining from food until three o'clock in 
the afternoon, but a religious liberty was allowed, connected with 
its observance, until the sixth century, when a Council of Orleans 
decreed excommunication against all who did not fast according 
to the laws of the Church. ISTor did the authorities stop at this 
penalty ; for in later times the unlucky wight detected in relieving 
hunger by eating prohibited meats, was punished by having all 
his teeth drawn — the ofi'ending members were summarily extracted. 
The prohibited food in Lent was flesh, eggs, cheese, and wine ; 
subsequently flesh alone was prohibited ; and this tenderness of 
orthodoxy so disgusted the Greek Church, that it lost its temper, 
flew off" into schism, and forgot charity in maintaining that the 
use of meat in Lent was damnable. 

The Xerophagia, or "dry eatings," were the days on which 
nothing was eaten but bread and salt. This was in very early 
times. Innovators added pulse, herbs, and fruits — no unpleasant 
fare in hot countries. The Montanists made this fast obligatory, 
and were very much censured in consequence. The Essenes, who, 
whether as Jews or Jewish Christians in Alexandria, were singu- 
larly strict observers of the Sabbath, carrying their strictness to a 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 317 

point which my readers may find in Jortin, if they are curious 
thereupon, observed also this fast very rigidly, and on the stated 
days ate nothing with their bread but salt and hyssop. 

Most of the saints recorded on the canon roll of Rome, appear 
to have maintained very indifierent tables, and to have considera- 
bly marred thereby their strength and efficiency. Saint Fulgen- 
tius abstained from everything savoury, and even drank no wine, 
says his biographer ; which looks as if the good men did take 
some for their stomach's sake ; and indeed Fulgentius himself took 
a little negus when he was indisposed to plain water ; and " small 
blame to him " for so harmless a proceeding. St. Eugenius never 
broke his fast till sunset ; and when a bunch of grapes was sent 
to a sick monk of the desert, he forwarded it to a second, and a 
second to a third, and so on to a twentieth, until his health-inspir- 
ing ofiering, made for man by God, was withered and nasty. 
These monks did not pray like Pope : — 

" The blessing thy free bounty gives 
Let me not cast away, 
For God is paid when man receives, — 
To enjoy is to obey." 

But this is a sentiment in the opposite extreme, or might be easily 
carried in that direction. Palladius says of one of these desert 
monks, St. Macarius, that for years together he lived only on raw 
herbs and pulse ; that during three consecutive years he existed 
on four or five ounces of bread daily ; and that he consumed but 
one small measure of oil in a twelvemonth — a substitute for the 
gallons of sack with which profaner men washed down their 
modicum of bread. St. Macarius, however, surpassed himself in 
Lent ; and an alderman might be excused for fainting at the idea 
of a human being passing forty days and nights in a standing 
position, with no more substantial support than a few raw cabbage- 
leaves on a Sunday! St. Genevieve was hardly inferior in 
austerity, and only ate twice in the week, on Sundays and Thurs- 
days, and then only beans and bread. When she grew old and 



318 TABLE TEAITS. 

infirm, and she was prematurely both, she indulged in a little fish 
and milk. Simeon Stylites surpassed both in culpable austerity. 
He spent an entire Lent without allowing anything to pass his 
lips ; and at other seasons this slow suicidal saint never ate but on 
Sundays. His chief occupation upon the pillar, which looks much 
more like a column of pride than a monument of humility, was 
in prapng and bowing. An admiring monk, who must have had 
as little of active usefulness to employ his time with as poor 
Simeon, exultingly records, that he did not eat once during the 
day, but that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four 
bows of adoration in that time. Oh, Simeon ! well for thee, poor 
fellow-mortal, if those reverences be not accounted rather as 
homage to thyself than to Him to whom homage is due. 

It is extremely difficult for the human mind to realize the idea 
of a Bishop of London never breaking his fast till the evening, 
and then being satisfied with a solitary egg, an inch of bread, and 
a cup of milk and water ; such, however, is said to have been the 
daily fare of St. Cedd, a predecessor of Dr. Bloomfield in the metro- 
politan diocese. " How unlike my Beverly ?" St. Severinus, an 
Austrian Prelate, had a more indifferent table than St. Cedd, espe- 
cially in Lent, when he ate but once a-week. St. William of 
Bourges never tasted meat after he was ordained. St. Theodosius, 
the Cenobiarch, was more frugal still, and bread often lacked, we 
are told, even for the holy ofiices of the Church. This would 
seem to intimate, however, that the officers of the Church may 
have eaten it. Be this as it may, when bread was needed for the 
sacrament, a string of mules miraculously appeared in the desert, 
bearing the necessary provision. " Necessary provision," may be 
well said, for if the Cenobites consumed little themselves, they 
presided at tables where occasionally sat a hundred hungry guests, 
who must have much needed a dinner, seeing that they crossed 
the desert to obtain it. 

Some of the most self-denying saints, like St. Felix of I^Tola, if 
they declined wine in its liquid form, took it in pills, — swallowing 
grapes. St. Paul, the first hermit, lived on the fruit of a tree 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 319 

which produced a fresL. supply daily, the bread to temper which 
was brought every morning by a raven. The diet was sufficiently 
invigorating to give strength to the modest man to bite off his 
own tongue, and spit it in the face of a lady who tried to tempt 
him, as the Irish nymph tempted the uncourteous St. Kevin of 
Glendalough. He was, in abstinence, only second to St. Isidore, 
who, when hungry, burst into tears, not because God had merci- 
fully provided him wherewith to satisfy lawful appetite, but because, 
sinful man that he was, he dared to eat at all ! 

I have spoken of the abstinence of a Bishop of London ; there 
was a Bishop of Worcester, Wulstan, who is worthy of being men- 
tioned with him. Wulstan was rather fond of savoury viands, but he 
was one day during mass so distracted by the smell of meat roasting 
in a kitchen, which must have been very close to his church, that 
he made a vow to abstain from meat for ever. But I do not know, 
if he kept his vow. St. Euthymius was a more rational man, for 
he taught his monks that to satisfy hunger was no crime, but that 
to abuse appetite and God's gifts too, was an offence. St. Mace- 
donius, the Syrian, did not discover this truth until he had so 
impaired his powers by long fasts, that it was impossible to restore 
them — as he tried to do on a diet of dry bread. And yet he was 
so prematurely gifted, that his own birth is said to have been the 
result of his own prayers ! 

The table kept by St. Publius for his monks was not of a liberal 
character. He allowed them nothing but pulse and herbs, coarse 
bread and water. IsTothing else! He prohibited wine, milk, 
cheese, grapes, and even vinegar — which every sour brother might 
.have distilled from his own ichor. From Easter to W^hitsuntide 
was accounted a holiday time, and during that festive period the 
brotherhood were allowed to grow hilarious, if they could, upon 
a gill of oil a-piece. St. Paula, " the widow," subjected her nuns 
to the same lively fare, and she moreover fiercely denounced all 
ideas of personal neatness and cleanliness, as an uncleanness of the 
mind. She accounted herself wise in so doing, but her nuns 
might fairly have put to her the question asked by Mizen, in the 



320 TABLE TKAITS. 

Fair Quaker of Deal : — " Do'st tliou think that nastiness giv^es 
thee a title to knowledge ?" 

St. John Chrysostom was as severe as Paula, and it would not 
have cost Olympias much to defray, as she insisted upon doing, 
the expenses of his table. The table which the saint kept for 
guests was, however, hospitably and delicately laden — and perhaps 
this was an inconsistency in a man who censured what he also 
encouraged. 

They who have made a saint of Charlemagne, aver that he 
broke his fast but once a day, and that after sunset. I cannot 
believe this of a man who dealt so largely in the eggs laid by his 
hens, and in vegetables raised in his garden. Nor do I believe 
that St. Sulpicius Severus would have written so capital a bio- 
graphy of St. Martin, had he lived, as it is said, on herbs, boiled 
with a little vinegar for seasoning. Surely, we have heard of the 
"kitchen" of gentlemen like Sulpicius, and if his condensed 
Scripture History be as dry as the bread he ate during the task, 
his letters to Claudia seen! to have been written on more generous 
food. Not that he was immoderate. He kept one cook, a very 
"plain cook" indeed, as Sulpicius describes him, when he des- 
patched the boy to Bishop Paulinus with a letter which com- 
mences with a startling bit of episcopal history, namely, that " all 
the cooks in the kitchen of Paulinus had left him without warn- 
ing, because the prelate was getting too careless about good living." 
Some commentators say, that the letter was a joke ; but the reply 
to it is extant, and therein it may be seen how PauHnus did not 
look upon it as a joke. 

Southey, in his " St. Romuald," mirthful as the story is, has 
not exceeded the truth, or rather has not departed from the nar- 
rative told by the good man's biographers : — 

" Then, Sir, to see how he would mortify 
The flesh ! If any one had dainty fare, 
Good man, he would come there ; 
And look at all the delicate things, and cry, 
Belly! Belly! 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 321 

You would be gourmandizing now. I know ; 

But it shall not be so ! — 
Home, to your bread and water. Home, I tell ye." 

And tlius says Alban Butler of him: — "He never would admit 
of the least thing to give a savour to the herbs or meal-gruel on 
which he supported himself. If anything was brought him better 
dressed, he, for the greater self-denial, applied it to his nostrils, 
and said, ' Oh Gluttony, Gluttony ! thou shalt never taste this ! 
Perpetual war is declared against thee !' St. William of Maleval 
was of the same opinion when he cried because he ate his dry 
bread with a relish, and found that what he called " sensuality " 
was not inseparable from the coarsest food. St. Benedict of Anian, 
on the other hand, did not decline the use of a little wine, when 
it was given him ; while St. Martinianus, again, lived upon biscuits 
and water, brought to him twice a-year — and very nasty fare it 
must have been towards the end of each six-months. It must 
have been worse than that of St. Peter Damian, who prided him- 
self on never drinking water fresh, and thought there was virtue 
in ha\dng it four-and-twenty hours old. St. Tarasius must have 
maintained a more decent table, for it is said of him that he used 
to take the dishes from it and give of them to the poor ; and 
honour be to his name, because of his good sense and his charity ! 
Our venerable acquaintance of the principality, St. Da-\dd, was not 
half so wise, however well-intentioned ; but St. Charles, Earl of 
Flanders, followed the better course, and not only lived moderately 
well, but acted better, by daily distributing seven hundred loaves 
to the poor. The Welsh saints, generally, kept as austere a table 
as St. Da\dd. There was, for instance, the cacophonous Wlnwaloe 
of Winwaloe, who kept his monks at starving point all the week, 
recalling them to life on Sundays by microscopic rations of hard 
cheese and shell-fish. His own fare was barley-bread strewn with 
ashes, and when Lent arrived, the quantity of ashes was doubled, 
in honour of the season ! St. Thomas Aquinas was so abstracted 
that he never knew, at dinner, what he was eating, nor could 
14* 



322 TAJ3LE TEAITS. 

remember, after it, if he had dined, which was likely enough. 
St. Frances, Widow, foundress of the Collations, was in more full 
possession of her wits ; as, indeed, the lady saints were, generally. 
She had her little fancies indeed, which were " only charming 
Fanny's way," and her 'beverage at eve was dirty water, out of a 
human skull ; but she had no mercy for lazy devotees, and invari- 
ably told sighing wives that they had active duties to perform, and 
that they had better keep out of monasteries, at least till they were 
widows. She was a good, humble woman ; and, as a commentator 
says of the abstinence of St. Euphrasia, without humility these 
facts would be but facts of devils ! 

Another gleam of good sense shines upon us from the person 
of St. Benedict. He drank wine, and so did his monks of Vico- 
vara, who liked his wine better than either the toast or sentiment 
with which he passed it round to them, and who tried to get rid 
of him by poisoning his glass; but the saint, full of inspired sus- 
picion, made over it the sign of the cross, and away went the flask 
into fifty fragments. The taste of the good saint was known after 
he left Vicovara, and a pious soul once sent him a couple of bottles 
of wine by a faithless messenger, who delivered but one. " Mind 
what you are about," said St. Benedict, " when you draw the other 
cork for yourself." The knave was not abashed, but when he did 
secretly open the other bottle for the solace of his own thirsty 
throat, he found nothing therein but a lively serpent, which glided 
from him after casting at him a reproachful look ! 

If St. Benedict was right in the ordering of his table, why 
St. John of Egypt was wrong, for he never drank anything but 
stagnant water, nor ate anything cooked by fire ; even his bread 
he complacently swallowed before it was baked ; — and what his 
liver was like, it would puzzle any but a physician even to con- 
jecture. 

There was infinitely more sense in the table kept by an abbot 
of the compound Christian and Pagan title and name of St. Plato. 
He never ate anything but what had been raised or procured by 
the labour of his own hands ; he was consequently never in debt 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 323 

■with respect to his household expenses, and if all men so far fol- 
lowed the example of St. Plato, who was a better practical philo- 
sopher than his heathen namesake, what a happy world we should 
make of it ! There would be fewer Christmas bills, and many- 
more joyous dinners, not only at Christmas, but all the year 
round ! 

St. Plato deserves our respect ; he would not live on alms. He 
was more useful in his generation than the men who, like St. 
Aphraates, were content to exist on the eleemosynary contribu- 
tions of the faithful, or than those who, like Zozimus and his 
followers, wandered through the desert, trusting to chance and 
calling it providence. • What, compared with our friend Plato, 
was that of St. Droun, the so-called patron of shepherds, who 
during forty years taught them nothing, and lived on the barley- 
bread which they brought him in return for his instruction. 

I have given one or two instances of the spare tables kept by a 
few of our ancient bishops ; I may here add to them the name of 
Elphege, some time Bishop of Winchester, and subsequently 
Archbishop of Canterbury. The smell of roast meat was never 
known in his palace on any but " extraordinary occasions." This, 
however, is a very indefinite term, and the table of this primate 
may have been one to make a cardinal give unctuous thanks for 
rich mercies, five days out of the seven. There was certainly 
gastronomic work to do in some of the ancient godly households, 
or St. James of Sclavonia would not have passed so many years 
in one, as he did, in the capacity of cook, "improving" the occa- 
sion, by drawing ideas of hell from his own fires, which were for 
ever roasting savoury joints, like those which strike the visitors 
with awe and appetite in the kitchens at Maynooth. 

If in some houses there were busy kitchens, in others there 
were soft couches, whereon digestion might progress. Thus 
Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, was a Saint and Martyr ; and it is 
said, that he had a most comfortable bed in his dormitory, but 
that he never slept upon it ! Then, what was the bed for ? It is 
added, that he fasted in private with great severity, — but it is no 



324 TABLE TRAITS. 

more " of faith " to believe this, than it is that he slept every 
night on the floor, under, and not upon, his own excellent feather- 
bed ; for what says the old refrain ? — 

" A notre coucher 
Un lit, des draps blancs, 

Une 

digue daine, bon ! 
Yoila la vie que ces moines font !" 

But he may have been a profane fellow who wrote these rude 
rhymes ; and we will no more implicitly trust him, than we will 
the prose historians of the doings and dealings of the saintly 
men. 

It is not an unusual thing to find wine-bibbers mentioned among 
the members of holy communities; where wine was generally 
supposed to be a luxury never employed but for the service of the 
altar, — and perhaps of the sick. The venerable Bede tells a 
story of a " brother," whom he had known, and whom he wishes 
to God he had never known, and who was given to worship the 
spigot. Bede does not give his name, but certifies that the too 
jolly friar lived ignobly in a noble monastery, where he was often 
reproved for his acts of drunkenness, and only tolerated because 
of his gifts, — not spiritual, but as a carpenter. He was a terrible 
tippler, but a hard workman to boot, and would, at any time, 
rather labour all day and all night at his bench than join the 
brethren in chapel. Indeed, when he did go, his thoughts were 
running on something else. He was like the profane Yorkshire 
farmer, who praised the institution of the Sabbath because it not 
only brought roast beef with it as a sacred observance, but it 
authorized him to attend in his pew at church, where, said he, " I 
puts up my legs and thinks o' nothing !" Bede's carpenter was 
characteristically punished for his bibbing; and the story was 
made much of, by way of monition to others. It was to this 
eff'ect : — " He, falling sick, and being reduced to extremity, called 
the brethren, and with much lamentation, and like one dainnied, 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 325 

began to tell them tliat he saw hell open, and Satan at the bottom 
thereof, and also Caiaphas, with the others that slew our Lord, by 
him delivered up to avenging flames. ' In whose neighbourhood,' 
said he, 'I see a place of eternal perdition prepared for me, 
miserable wretch that I. am !' The brothers, hearing these words, 
began seriously to exhort him that he should repent even then, 
while he was in the flesh. He answered in despair, — ' I have no 
time now to change my course of life, when I have myself seen 
my judgment passed.' When he had uttered these words, he 
died, without having received the saving viaticum ; and his body 
was buried in the remotest part of the monastery ; nor did any 
one dare to say masses, sing psalms, or even to pray for him." 
Which seems a very hard case; for if any one needed such 
service it was he ; and the Church's ability to extricate him could 
not be denied, when she was duly pre-paid for the service. 

Curiously enough, St. Monica, the mother of St. Augiistin, ranks 
among the wine-bibbers. Her pious parents left their children to 
be brought up by a servant-maid, who had more zeal than dis- 
cretion, and who would allow none of the children to drink, were 
they ever so thirsty, except at meal-times, and then only a drop or 
two of water. " If you cannot restrain your desire to drink now," 
she would say, " what will it be when you have wine at command ?" 
Now, the effect of this speech was exactly like that of the con- 
fessor to the hostler, when he asked the latter, if he never greased 
the horses' teeth in order to prevent them eating their corn. It 
gave the young Monica a new idea. She was accustomed to draw 
the wine for her father's table, and she henceforth began to drink 
a portion each time that she went to the cellar with her pitcher. 
And I do not know that Mr. Millais, or any other of the pre- 
Raphaelite gentlemen, could have a better subject for a pictui-e, 
than that representing the scene when the horrified nurse-maid 
beheld her young charge indulging in her cups in the j)arental 
wine-vault. The lecture she received worked her conversion, we 
are told; and she married, and became the mother of St. Augustin, 
who so far followed the maternal example that, in his earlier years, 



326 TABLE TEAITS. 

wlien, with his eyes upon heaven, his heart was with the good 
things of the earth, his commonest prayer used to he, "Lord, make 
me rehgious, hut not just yetV 

The nurse-maid of Monica deserved to have been the wife, — 
and perhaps she was, — of St. Theodotus, the vintner of Ancyra. 
He was a teetotaller who kept a tavern, and who passed the live- 
long day in leaning over his counter and begging his customers 
not to drink ! Well, men have been canonized for less useful 
service to their kind ; and Theodotus was more worthily employed 
in keeping drunkards from his wine-casks, than St. Pius V. was 
when, every day before dinner, bj way of mocking his appetite, 
he resorted to the public hospitals, and kissed the ulcers of the 
patients ! IsTay, biographers tell us that an English Protestant 
gentleman was suddenly converted to Romanism, by observing the 
condescension and affection with which Pius kissed the ulcers on 
the feet of some poor men ! The pope, if he and the convert 
dined together after this nasty ceremony, might have confessed 
that he had been sore put to it for an argument that should carry 
conviction to an English gentleman in search of a religion. 

Let us contrast this pope in his pride with a cardinal in his fall. 
" When Wolsey," says Mr. Hunter the antiquary, " was dismissed 
by his tyrannical master to his northern diocese, he passed many 
Aveeks at Scrooby. It is a pleasing picture which his faithful 
servant. Cavendish, gives of him at wthis period of his life : — 
' Ministering many deeds of charity, and attending on Sundays at 
some parish church in the neighbourhood ; hearing or saying mass 
himself, and causing some one of his chaplains to preach to the 
people ; and that done, he would dine in some honest house of that 
town, where should be distributed to the poor a great alms, as 
well of meat and drink, as of money to supply the want of suffi- 
cient meat, if the number of the poor did so exceed of necessity." 
Wolsey was no saint certainly, but he was as honest a man as 
Pius, and a wiser when he fed the poor rather than Iriss their 
ulcers. 

But there is no accounting for taste; the Russian Boniface 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 327 

used to roll himself among thorns and nettles, in order to get an 
appetite, or to punish himself for indulging over much. St. 
Germanus, on the other hand, commenced every repast by put- 
ting ashes into his mouth ; the modern custom of beginning with 
oysters certainly is better both for taste and stomach. St. Walthen 
took wine, but then he put spiders in it. St. Dominic, too, was 
singular in his diet, and he sometimes spent his half hour before 
dinner in one of the most curious positions that gentlemen could 
possibly fix upon. The Abbot of St. Vincent's one day desired 
his company at dinner, but at the usual hour the saint was in 
church, and had forgotten the invitation. In the meantime, the 
turkey and chine were spoiling, and the hungry abbot despatched 
a monk in quest of the loiterer ; the messenger hurried to the 
church, where, to his very considerable astonishment, he beheld 
St. Dominic " ravished and in ecstasy," whatever that may mean, 
"raised several cubits above the ground, and without motion." 
The Saint, on being told that dinner was ready, graciously smiled - 
at the intelligence, and gently descended to the ground. 

St. Laurence would have joked at this, as he did at his own 
grilling. After he had lain for some time extended on his grid- 
iron, he calmly said to the executioner, "Will- you have the kind- 
ness to turn me, as I am quite done on the under side." The 
executioner, a trifle astonished, did as he was required, and soon 
after, the Saint, again speaking, said, " I shall be obliged if you'll 
take me up, as I am now fit for eating." This story reminds me 
of the remark made by an Irishman, when first told that St. 
Patrick had crossed the ocean on a millstone : — " I can't contradict 
it ! He was a lucky fellow !" 

"We are told of St. Bernard, who used to walk before dinner on 
the banks of the Lake of Lausanne, that on hearing two of his 
monks speak of the beauty of the lake, he declared that no such 
lake existed, or he had been too much absorbed to have noticed 
it. So the Trappists used to glory in not knowing where or how 
they dined, or recollecting anything about it ! All this shows 
less wisdom at table than was exhibited by the royal St. Louis, 



328 TABLE TEAITS. 

who, when a certain friar began to discuss doctrinal subjects with 
the pullets, stopped him with the remark that " all things had their 
time, and joking was good sauce with chickens 1" 

St. Laurence Justinian, the first patriarch of Venice, was far 
less indulgent than the royal saint of France. He was so little 
so, that when his thirsty monks asked for a little wine, declaring 
that their throats felt as dry as the high road in summer, he 
used quite as drily to remark, that if they could not bear parched 
throats now, what would they do in the fires of purgatory ? St. 
John the Dwarf, Anchoret of Scete, cared as little for wine as St. 
Laurence, but he was fond of fruit, and he obtained a supply from 
a strange source. An old hermit bade him plant his walking- 
staff in the ground, and he not only did so, but watered it regu- 
larly for three years, when it bore pippins, sweeter than those 
that grew at Ribstone up to the time of the death of the late 
baronet. Before this miraculously-bearing stick, the little man 
used to read prayers as devoutly as Sir Hollyoak Goodrick, the 
present Ribstone baronet, does to the villagers in his own parish 
church, and for the same reason each had much to be thankful for. 
It must be confessed that John the Dwarf had more taste than his 
namesake of Cupertino, who not only ate nothing but vegetables, 
but ate no vegetables that any other human being could be 
induced to swallow. It was such garbage as only pigs would con- 
descend to. Arcades amho — nasty creatures both. 

St. Francis of Assisium exhibited something more of true humi- 
lity at his table, with a touch of the false metal notwithstanding. 
He ate nothing dressed by fire, unless he were very ill, and even 
then he covered it with ashes, or dipped it in cold water. His 
common daily food v>^as dry bread strewn with ashes ; but this 
founder of the Friars' Minors had the good sense not to condemn 
his followers to the rigorous diet he observed himself ; and " Bro- 
ther Ass," as he familiarly called that self, was in his opinion 
worthy of no better fare. 

There was a founder of another community who exhibited 
more singularity than St. Francis, who, despite some mistakes, 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 329 

was a man of whom none other dare speak but with respect, — St. 
Ammon, founder of the hermitages of Mtria. At the age of 
twentj-two this young Egyptian noble married a fair girl of Mem- 
phis ; and instead of a nuptial banquet, he treated his bride to a 
reading of a particularly edifying chapter from St. Paul, after 
which he withdrew to solitary meditation. During eighteen 
long years he occupied himself in training balsam-trees all day, 
after which he returned home to a supper of fruit and herbs; 
then came that terrible reiteration of advice from St. Paul, fol- 
lowed by a separate solitary comment on the part of this exem- 
plary pair. At the end of the time above specified, he retired 
altogether from domestic life, and settled alone on Mount Mtria, 
and his biographers naively remark, this was " with his wife's con- 
sent." This saint was of such a " complexion " of virtue, that one 
day, on accidentally catching sight of an uncovered portion of his 
body, he was so shocked that he fainted away. If he had only 
read " Erasmus Wilson, on the Skin," he would have learned to 
look oftener at his own, and would have be^n a cleaner man, a 
better husband, a more grateful feeder, and an improved Chris- 
tian. 

But St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, probably exceeded 
all other originators of communities in the "fierceness," so to 
speak, of his dietetic laws ; he never spared himself nor his dis- 
ciples. A Carthusian is never permitted to eat meat under any 
pretence whatever. In addition to this they fast eight months in 
the year, and I suppose they starve in Lent, for during that sea- 
son they are forbidden to eat what is called " white meats," that 
is, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. Dry bread with water is their 
Lenten fare ; and a peculiar law connected with them is, that 
they can never change into another order, because they would 
thereby profit a little in the way of better living ; but a brother 
of any other order may become a Carthusian, as thereby he 
increases his mortifications and diminishes his diet. Of course 
from these remarks the Carthusians of the " Charterhouse " are 
excepted. K the thin spirit of St. Bruno ever scents the juicy 



330 TABLE TEAITS. 

viands that adorn the well-spread table there^ it probably melts into 
thin air by the very force of disgust or ghastly envy. 

The table kept by St. Bridget, when she married Ulpho, prince 
of Jirericia, in Sweden, was a very modest one for so princely a 
pair, but what was spared thereby was given to the poor. Bridget 
and Ulpho, she sweet sixteen, he two years more, read every eve- 
ning the soothing chapter from St. Paul, which formed the favourite 
study of St. Ammon and his wife ; but, as it would appear, with 
indifferent success. "They enrolled themselves," say their various 
biographers, " in the Third Order of St. Francis, and lived in their 
own house as if it had been a regular and austere monastery." 
The biographers immediately add without comment, — "They 
afterwards had eight children : four boys and four girls ;" and as 
the same paragraph goes on to state that " all these children were 
favoured with the blessings of divine grace," it may be fairly con- 
cluded that a domestic observation of a monastic regularity and 
austerity, is a course that will purchase blessings and olive-branches. 

The case of St. Gomer and his wife, the Lady Gwinmary, may 
perhaps be cited as an exception. But this Gwinmary was an 
exacting lady at all times, and when St. Gomer betook himself 
from her to live in the desert on bitterness and biscuits, he fared 
as sumptuously and lived far more quietly than he had done at 
home. He was one of the most placid of saints, and it is a 
positive libel upon him for the French Admiralty to have given 
his name to one of the most thundering steamers in the service. 
Its broadsides far more nearly resemble the tongue of Gwinmary 
than the tones of Gomer. 

In charming contrast with this truculent Gwinmary do we meet 
and greet the gentle St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The record of 
her good deeds would fill a volume, but out of them I have only 
to select a table trait — to register which is also to eulogize it. I 
do not allude to her habitual temperance, to her dry bread and 
thimble-full of wine, when she sat at meat with kings and queens, 
her equals in birth ; nor to her small feasts with her two maids, in. 
the absence of her consort, Louis the Landgrave ; but I allude — 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 331 

and listen, O ye Benedicts, with grateful rapture — to the fact " that 
the kitchen she kept out of her own private purse, not to be the 
least charge to her husband." If celibate priests, who can hardly 
be supposed capable of appreciating such a fact, canonized so rare 
a lady, all married men who love banquets but dislike the butch- 
ers' bills, will cry " Well done !" and recommend their wives to 
.read the instructive life of Eliabeth of Ilungar}^ 

Who would expect to hear good of a Borgia ? — St. Francis 
Borgia was virtuous enough to save his family name from entire 
infamy. Of no other man or woman of his house could it be 
said that they gave up suppers, in order to have more time for 
prayers. It was not ^or Alexander VI., the papal glory of his 
house and the shame of mankind, that would have been content 
with one meal a-day, and that meal — a mess of leeks, or some 
pulse, with a piece of bread, and a cup of water. At the same 
time, Francis Borgia kept a table becoming a man of his rank, for 
the gratification of his guests of high degree. There, while they 
ate their venison, and quaffed their lacJirym(^ Ckristi, he nibbled 
his leeks, and sipped his water, " and conversed facetiously with 
them, though at table his discourse generally turned on piety." 
It was very like a Borgia to make piety facetious, but if fun in 
holiness be of the ingredients necessary to the making of a saint, 
Sidney Smith has as good a right as Borgia to be on the roll of 
the beati. Our reverend "joker of jokes," indeed, would not have 
smiled at the cook who put wormwood instead of mint into his 
broth ; and I doubt if Peter Plimley ever thought of doing what 
Francis Borgia did, — namely, chewing his pills, and swallowing 
physic slowly, as works of meritorious mortification, bearing com- 
.. pound interest to the profit of the practitioner. St. Wilfrid, who 
taught the half-starved South Saxons to catch the fish that swarm 
at their feet, and thereby live, seems to me to have performed a 
far more meritorious work than if he had passed his life irt gnaw- 
ing leeks or masticating pills. Our native saint, a good man at 
table, was often better employed than St. Theresa, who is so eulo- 
gized because when serving at table, or carrying the dinner from 



332 TABLE TKAITS. 

the kitchen, " she was often seen suddenly absorbed in God, with 
the utensils or instruments of her business in her hands." The 
hungry and expectant monks might have quoted against the rapt 
maid, the assertion of the royal sage, that there is a time to eat, as 
well as to fast and pray. But St. Theresa, with all her good qual- 
ities, was as obstinate as the Polish saint Hedwiga, who not only 
abstained from meat till abstinence had nearly proved suicidal, but 
who refused to save her life by eating any, until the Pope's legate 
had issued a very peremptory precept to that effect St. Peter of 
Alcantara lost all taste by his nearly total-abstinence principle, and 
when some one gave him warm water with vinegar in it, he thought 
it was his usual dinner of bean broth ! That actively good saint, 
Charles Borromeo, was only wisely moderate. " His austerities were 
discreet," is the phrase of one of his biographers ; and his abstem- 
iousness made his health rather than marred it. This was so well 
known, that they who dieted themselves in order to recover or 
preserve health, were said to have adopted the remedy of Doctor 
Borromeo. St. Francis Xavier had something of the discretion of 
Charles Borromeo, — and of the modesty too, for he dressed his 
own dinners, even when he was apostolic legate ; and that St 
Clement of Alexandria belonged to the same class of sagely tem- 
perate men, is proved by his maintaining that a little wine taken 
at evening, after the labours of the day, was good for the body, 
and cheering for the spirits. So the sainted Archbishop of York 
had no repugnance to a slice of roast goose, for, as he truly 
remarked, so good a thing was not designed especially for sinners. 
And this recalls to my mind a comment, similar in spirit, made by 
St. Thomas a Becket A monk once saw him eating a wing of a 
pheasant with much relish, and the pharisaical fellow thereon 
affected to be scandalized, saying that he thought Thomas was 
more of a mortified man. " Thou art but a ninny," said the Arch- 
bishop ; "knowest thou not that a man may be a glutton upon 
horse-beans ; while another may enjoy with refinement even the 
wing of a pheasant, and have nature's aid to digest what Heaven's 
bounty gave ?" 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 333 

TMs was good sense in the Archbishop, who perhaps had been 
reading Epicurus, before he sat down to his repast. However this 
may be, it is certain that the philosopher in question says some- 
thing very hke what Becket said to the friar. " Is man," he asks, 
" made to disdain t'he gifts of nature ? Is he placed on earth only 
to gather bitter fruits ? For whom then are the flowers that the 
gods strew at the feet of mortals ?. . .We please Providence when 
we yield to the divers inclinations which Providence suggests ; our 
duties have reference to His laws ; and our innocent desires are 
born of His inspirations.'' 



There are few things more common in the Lives of the Saints, 
than to find them, after spare banquets of their own, working penal 
miracles at the banquets of others. St. Eloy was gifted with ter- 
rible power in this way, and endless are the stories of revellers 
turned to stone by the might of his magic right arm. Other 
saints had equal power in turning the tables upon those who slighted 
them ; and I will take this opportunity of narrating one instance, 
and I will set my muse in slippers to detail what occurred at 

THE BRIDAL AND BANQUET OF FERQUES. 

Near the marble quarries of Ferques, adjacent to Landrecthun 
le Nord, in the Boulonnais, may be seen a circular range of stones 
bearing a close resemblance in their shape, though little in their 
magnitude, to those at Stonehenge ; as also to the Devil's Needles, 
near Boroughbridge, and to the solitary block on the common at 
Harrogate. Learned people recognise the stones at Ferques by 
the appellation of the Mallus, a Druidical name for an altar ; but 
the traditionary folks, wiser in their generation, acknowledge no 
other title for these remains of antiquity than JSfeuches^ an old 
provincial word, the corruption, I suppose, of JVoces, and signifying 
a bridal, including the banquet which followed it. According to 
them, the stones at Ferques stand there as a testimony of divine 



334: TAELE TEAITS. 

vengeance, inflicted on a fiddler and other individuah belonging^ 
to a wedding party who refused to kneel before the Host, as it was 
being borne along by a priest to a dying brother. Rabelais says, 
that a well-disposed and sensible man believes all that he is told ; 
(" Un homme de bien, un homme de bon sens, croit toujours ce 
qu'on lui dit, et ce qu'il trouve par ecrit ;") and argal^ as the logi- 
cal grave-digger in Hamlet has it, this story of a bridal and ban- 
quet will be allowed to pass without question. 

Though around the bleak district there is not a grove 

That can boast of a shade, e'en in summer, for love, 

Nor a walk by the side of a murmuring stream, 

Where somnambulist lovers may talk as they dream 5 

Nor a valley retir'd, nor sweet mossy dell, 

Where young hearts that are aching, their anguish may tell ; 

Nor a wood where a maiden deserted may sigh. 

Or where youths, stripp'd of hope, may with decency die ; — 

Though all it can boast be a desolate heath. 

Where 't would puzzle young Cupid to find him a wreath, — 

Yet e'en here the Idalian has furnish'd full work 

For the hearts of the youths and the maidens of Ferques, 

Of these there were two in the good days of old. 

When the hard iron heel of the baron so bold 

Ground those to the dust whom the mere chance of birth 

Had deprived of the licence to lord it on earth. 

The maid was as light and as shy as the fawn. 

Her eyes dark as night, and her brow like the dawn ; 

And her lips, twice as rich and as red as the rose. 

Were more warm than the sky at a summer eve's close ; 

While a music fell from them made only to bless ; 

And her shape — nay ! her shape I must leave you to guess. 

'T would require the power pictorial of Burke, 

To record how sublime was this beauty of Ferques. 

The swain was in manhood's first op'ning bloom. 
In doublet, slash'd hose, martial bonnet, and plume ; 
And he look'd, as he walk'd 'neath the moon's silver light, 
Half hero, half mortal ;— half bourgeois, half knight. 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 335 

If upward he gazed into heaven's soft skies, 
He saw nothing there half so soft as her eyes ; 
Or, at least, the young lover thus gallantly swore, 
As he ran the long roll of his soft nonsense o'er, 
And mincingly walk'd by the damosel's side. 
The latter all fondness, the former all pride ; — 
With one arm round the maiden, one hand on his dirk, 
Irresistibly fine look'd this gallant of Ferques. 

These walkings, these gazings, the terrible sighing, 

With death, or at least earnest threat'nings of dying ; 

These sinkings of spirit, these meltings away, 

With the watchings by night and the dreamings by day, 

What could such a mixture combustible bring. 

But a state of incendiarism, like Swing ? 

When hearts are the haystack, and Love holds the torch, 

'T is odds but the hay-stack will soon get a scorch. 

And what else could arise from those meetings at eve, 

From those flaming assertions which maidens believe. 

And those vows warmly breath'd ' 'twixt the gloam and the murk,'* 

But a bridal and banquet to gladden all Ferques ? 

Love's eddying current, I say it in sooth. 
Ran for this young couple remarkably smooth ; 
For the fathers paternally look'd on each child, 
While the mothers maternally wept as they smiled ; 
Fraternally too a whole bevy of brothers 
Look'd on the alliance as fondly as mothers ; 
And, if the young bride had possess'd but a sister, 
These lines would have told how she tenderly kiss'd her. 
Suffice it to say, that there never was seen, 
In valley, dale, hamlet on moorland or green. 
An assembly so joyous as met at the kirk. 
To view and to envy the lovers of Ferques. 

For, the youthful, the aged, the ugly, the fair, 
The idle, the busy, grave and gay, all were there. 
Maids with prayers on their lips, for the weal of the bride, 
Some who long'd for looks, some for him hj her side, 

* " 'T wixt the gloaming and the murk, 
When the kye comes hame." — Hoaa. 



336 TABLE TKAITS. 

And, though last, yet most certain, by no means the least, 
Stood his Rev'rence, who having been bid to the feast, 
Look'd as jocund and joyous, and beaming with smiles, 
As the fair Cytherean, when weaving her wiles.* 
For where is the priest, be he Pagan, Hindoo, 
Yellow Bonze from Japan, olive sage from Loo Choo, 
A Franciscan Friar, an opium-drench'd Turk, 
But loves a fair feast like this banquet at Ferques ? 

'Twould be tedious to tell, when the service was done. 
How that of the gallants was warmly begun. 
How, like the old suitors in Livy's old story, 
By ' Cupiditate ' (his words) ' et Amore,'t 
The hearts of the damsels they ruthlessly task'd, 
And finally gain'd twice as much as they ask'd. 
Ah, sigh not to think that in Love's stricken field, 
The maidens of Ferques were so ready to yield ; 
For Livy declares that no maid can withstand 
The wooer who comes with such arms in his hand. 
They're pleasant to talk of, but 'neath them doth lurk 
A peril not felt less at Rome than at Ferques. 

The banquet was sped, and the floor being clear'd, 

Terpsichore's summons distinctly was heard. 

In the tuning Cremona that squeak'd forth its call. 

Inviting all those light of foot to the ball. 

Lovely dance ! of thy charms how correct was the notion 

Of her who the Poetry, called thee, of Motion If 

When Beauty her features in smiles deigns to grace, 

What are those same smiles but the dance of the face ? 

And when Dancing and Modesty happily meet, 

What is Dancing just then but the smiles of the feet ?§ 

I'd defy e'en a hermit the summons to shirk, 

Ask'd a measure to tread by the beauties of Ferques. 

* ^L7i,oiu./j,eL6^g 'A<ppo6iT7j. Iliad, iii. 414. 

t After " Cupiditate et Amore," Livy ungallantly adds, quae maxime ad muliebre ingen- 
tum efficaces preces sunt." 

$ Lady Morgan, I think, calls dancing , " the Poetry of Motion." 

§ " Qu'est-ce que la danse ? la sourire des jambes. Qu'est-ce que la sourire? la danse 
du visage." — Bibliophile Jacob. 



THE DIET OF SAINTS. 337 

When moonliglit has risen to silver the scene, 

The party adjourn'd from the hall to the green, 

And their laughter was shaking the stars in the sky, 

When by chance, on the heels of their mirth, there pass'd by 

A Frapciscan from Boulogne, Franciscanly shod,* 

Who ask'd them to kneel at the sight of their God, 

Whose presence mysterious he fully reveal'd. 

But the fiddler, he swore, he'd be hang'd if he kneel'd, 

And afiSrm'd — most irreverent charge 'gainst a monk — 

That the barefooted priest was decidedly drunk. 

And the party applauded each quip and each quirk 

That fell from this vile Paganini of Ferques. 

But, oh, wonder ! those ribalds their scoffs had scarce utter'd, 

When, at a low prayer by the Cordelier mutter'd, 

Their laughter was heard to change into a moan. 

As the priest transformed each to a figure of stone. 

There motionless still do the revellers stand, 

Misshapen, as turn'd from their sculptor's rough hand ; 

Save one, who when moonlight pours down from above, 

May be seen from the spot vainly trying to move. 

Some affirm 'tis the bridegroom aroused from his trance, 

Some declare 'tis the bride gliding forth to the dance. 

But 'tis only the fiddler endeavouring to jerk 

His bow arm o'er the once magic fiddle of Ferques. 

* The theatre at Boulogne stands on the site of the old convent garden belonging to the 
Cordeliers, the sea formerly flowed close to the spot. When Henry VIII. took Boulogne, 
he converted the convent into a marine arsenal. 



15 



338 TABLE TEAITS. 



THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 

It may be seen from our last chapter, that the bill of fare of. 
those who dined in the desert was neither very long nor very 
varied. It was otherwise with the bettei-fed, but perhaps not 
better-taught gentlemen of the church of later days. Thus, for 
instance, the Cure of Brequier kept a very different table from 
that of the lean Amphitryons of the desert. Brillat Savarin once 
called on the holy man just as he had dismissed the soup and 
beef from the table. These were replaced by a leg of mutton a 
la royale^ a fat capon, and a splendid salad. The hour was 
scarcely noon, and the cure had sat down to this saint's fare alone. 
He was not selfish, however, and he invited his guest to " break 
bread " with him, but the guest, a prince of " gastronomers " in 
his way, declined, and the cure, like Coriolanus, did it all alone ! 
He finished the " gigot " to the ivory, the capon to the bones, and 
the salad to the polished bottom of the bowl. A colossal cheese 
was then placed before him, in which he made a breach of ninety 
degrees, and having washed down all with a bottle of wine, he, 
like the Irishman, thanked God "for that snack," and betook him- 
self to digestion and repose. " Le pauvre homme I" 

The nuns were in no ways behind the priests. Madame d'Ares- 
trel, lady Abbess of the nuns of the Visitation of Belley, [faustum 
nonien !) once told a secret to a visitor who feared she was going 
to expound a chapter from the Prophets. " If you want a fore- 
taste of Paradise in the guise of good chocolate," said she, " be 
sure to make it over-night, in an earthenware coffee-pot. Its 
standing still for a night concentrates it, and gives it a velvety 
taste, which is divine ! And Heaven cannot be angry with us for 
this little luxury, for is not Heaven, too, divine?" .How wide the 
distance between St. Paula, widow, and Madame d'Arestrel, of the 
convent of Visitation ! I may add, that if the Visitandines made 
good chocolate, the monks of the Feuillants, in Paris, were 



THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. ^6\f 

renowned for their ratafie. But they too have superior authority 
for good living. A dainty dish in Italy is c<)mmonly called a 
mouthful for a cardinal." — un hoccone di cardinali. 

The canons took the tone from the cardinals. When the 
French canon RoUet became ill through excessive drinking, his 
doctor interdicted all strong beverages, and was not a little wroth, 
on his next visit, at finding the dignitary in bed indeed, but at his 
bed-side a little table, neatly laid out with bottles and glasses. 
The canon met the threatened storm by gently remarking: — 
" Doctor, when you forbade me drinking wine, you did not wish 
to deprive me of the pleasure of looking at the bottle !" It was 
such canons who were the best customers of the nuns who dis- 
tilled liqueurs, and of the Ursulines who manufactured the dain- 
tiest drops flavoured by the daintiest essences ! But in the Arch- 
bishop of Paris himself, M. de Belley, the clergy of France had 
example to w^hich they might appeal as authority for indulging in 
good cheer. The archiej)iscopal face was wreathed in smiles at 
the sight of a good dinner. The prelate lived to be a veteran 
among gastronomers, and was, in other respects, not an unworthy 
archbishop. 

But M. de Belley was at least a gentleman in his gastronomic 
propensities. He was not, like a Russo-Greek " Papa," a brandy- 
bibber. The Russo-Greek priests sanctify drinking, in the minds 
(jf the people by their evil example. Monsieur Leverson Le Due, 
a French Diplomatist in Russia, tells us that he knows of one 
parish in Muscovy where the people lock up their pastor every 
Saturday night, in order that he may not be too muzzy for mass 
on the Sunday. They occasionally find him very drunk, never- 
theless, when they have forgotten previously to examine beneath 
his robe, under which the sinning sot sometimes smuggles his 
quart of Cognac ! Sir George Simpson crossed the Pacific in a 
Russian vessel. The chaplain had been sent in her to sea, because 
he was always too drunk to officiate on land. He was kept sober 
expressly for the hour of service on Sundays, but at other times, 
he appears to have realized the verse in the old song of Dibdin's, 
wherein it is said that 



340 TABLE TRAITS. 

•■' T other day as our chaplain was preaching, 

Behind him I curiously slunk ; 
And while he our duty was teaching, 

As how we should never get drunk, 
I show'd him the stuff, and he twigg'd it, 
And it soon set his Rev'rence agog. 

And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, 

And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd, 

And w-e all of us swigg'd it, — 
And we swore there was nothing like grog." 

These examples, however, must be understood as occurring mostly, 
if not exclusively, among the lower classes of the clergy. There 
was a time when " the Vicar and Moses " illustrated the sad doings 
of a similar class among ourselves. 

The Greek clergy in the South of Europe present us with some- 
thing no less curious of aspect. The hall-kitchen of the Greek 
Patriarch, at Constantinople, is crowded with inferior clergy, who 
take their meals there, and his All-Holiness himself is served with 
pipes and sweetmeats by nothing less than gentlemen in Deacon's 
orders. Fancy our Lord Primate ringing his bell for cheroots for 
two ! and having them brought in on a silver tray by the Curate 
of St. Margaret's ! 

The Greek usages however are classical. The stranger who 
dines with the Patriarch has, previous to falling to, water poured 
over his hands as he holds them over a basin with a perforated cover, 
and the napkins for drying them are as delicate as rose-leaves. 
The guest reclines on a low couch, in ancient fashion, and his 
repast is placed on a low stool at his side. The same custom 
exists in the convents, but meat is seldom to be found there by a 
guest who arrives unexpectedly. The monks themselves never eat 
it at all. During half the year they have but one meal a-day, 
and that consists of vegetables and bread. On the other days of 
the year they are permitted the more liberal, but sufficiently ere- 
mitic fare of cheese, eggs, fish, wine, and milk ; but even on these 
gala days they are never allowed more than two meals. Poor 
fellows! the majority of them pass tlieir reir.arkably well-sp«?r!t 



THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DATS. 341 

time, when not at table, in tilling the ground or teaching wonder- 
ful feats to very accomplished tom-cats ! 

A Greek monk's idea of an Englishman is that he is a plum- 
pudding eater. And no wonder, since the English are almost the 
exclusive purchasers of the currant-grapes which are cultivated 
all along the northern shores of the Peloponnesus, from Patra to 
Corinth. As the Chinese think that we take their tea that we 
may live, so the Greek monks conclude that we must buy their 
currants, or die ! At the convent of Vestizza, the good fathers 
trouble their heads about nothing but the produce and price of 
their great staple crop. If you ask how many brethren there are 
in the convent, they will answer, " Three hundred ; and what was 
the price of currants in England when you left ?" Inquire if their 
books be in good order, and they will reply in the negative, adding 
an assurance that they do their utmost to produce the best cur- 
rants in the country. And they will give you permission to see 
their church, if you will only promise to recommend their dwarf 
grapes to the English merchants who are catering for plum-pud- 
ding eaters at home. The grounds of other convents in the penin- 
sula are famous for their nuts, in the exportation of which the 
brethren drive no inconsiderable trade. 

These worthy people are said to be a trifle more enlightened 
and a degree less slothful than they were some thirty years ago. 
There was ample room and verge enough for improvement; for at 
the period mentioned, the Greek priests resisted the introduction 
of the potato into the kitchen-garden, for the veiy satisfactory 
reason that the po7nme de terre was the very identical apple with 
which Satan beguiled Eve out of Paradise ! Yes, these modem 
and orthodox saints very generally held that the devil tempted 
Eve with an " ash-leaf kidney !" 

If we cross over to Abyssinia, we shall find that the priests and 
orthodox people there keep as poor tables, at least on feast days, 
as the Greeks. Above eight months in the year are assigned by 
the Abyssinian Christians to abstinence ! On these occasions an 
Abyssinian neither eats nor drinks till long after noon. On festival 



342 TABLE TEAITS. 

days, however, they make up for their moderation by unrestrained 
excess. Mr. Mansfield Perky ns, a traveller who had given us the 
most recent account of life in Abyssinia, tells us that, in honour 
of the festival of the Elevation of the Cross, he gave an early 
breakfast to some dozen guests, who were engaged to half-a-dozen 
other parties in the course of the same joyous day, and that these 
guests whetted their appetite for later meals by consuming at 
breakfast a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and endless gallons of 
mead ! On these occasions the mead is pretty prolific of murder. 
The guests get dreadfully drunk in honour of the day, exactly as 
many highly civilized Christian people in happy England do on 
the yearly recurrence of " merry Christmas." Indeed, a feast of 
the Elevation of the Cross without plenty of quarrelling and 
bloodshed would be as dull as Donnybrook fair now is without a 
row. ' But the Abyssinian Christian is as clever in establishing a 
casus belli as a Donnybrook Romanist. If the latter sees the fair 
is likely to end without a fight, he simply takes off his hat, draws 
a white line round it with chalk, and declaring that he will break 
the head of the first man who denies that such white line is silver 
lace, he has speedily abundance of active work before him. So a 
pious Abyssinian at an " Elevation " banquet, if he finds things 
dull, merely remarks to his dearest friend and next neighbour, 
"You are a good sort of man, but you are not so handsome as I 
am !" and thereupon out fly the knives of the parties and their 
respective friends, Avhich they proceed to clean by plunging them 
into each other's ribs I 

The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage such 
pugnacious propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of the slaughter- 
ing of oxen for the kitchen, says : — " Almost before the death- 
struggle is over, persons are ready to flay the carcase, and pieces 
of the raw meat are cut oft', and served up before this operation 
is completed. In fact, as each part presents itself, it is cut off 
and eaten while yet warm and quivering. In this state it is con- 
sidered and justly so, to be very superior in taste to what it is 
when cold. Raw meat, if kept a little time, gets tough; whereas, 



THE SUPPOET OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 343 

if eaten fresh and warm, it is far tenderer than the most tender 
joint that has been hung a week in England. The taste is per- 
haps, in imagination, rather disagreable at first, but far otherwise 
when one gets accustomed to it ; and I can readily believe that 
raw meat would be preferred to cooked meat, by a man who from 
childhood had been accustomed to it." Such fare, I may observe, 
may not be out of place at the table of a patriarch who lives in 
such a climate as that of Abyssinia, but we suspect that it would 
as much astonish a dinner party at an episcopal palace in England, 
as Mr. Perky ns himself would do were he to sit down to that din- 
ner in his ordinary Abyssinian fashion of — a bald head covered 
with butter ! 

I have spoken in another chapter of a Brahmin who stuffed 
himself with sweetmeats until he was nearly suffocated, and who 
exclaimed, on being recommended to swallow a little water, that 
if he had room for water he would have swallowed more sweet- 
meats ! It is but justice, however, to these saintly gentlemen to 
confess that they can fast when there is anything to be gained by 
it. Among the Mahrattas, when a fast man attempts to cheat his 
creditors, a Brahmin is hired to sit the dhurna^ and this is the 
process — a process, by the Avay, which Monsieur Dimanche tried 
on Don Juan, but unsuccessfully. The Brahmin goes to the house or 
tent of the debtor, sometimes attended by numerous followers, and he 
announces the dhurna^ by which the debtor must not eat until he 
has discharged his liabilities. The clerical bailiff sits at his side and 
is bound to fast also, until the matter is arranged. He who holds 
out longest wins the day, and if the debtor be famished he will pay 
rather than die outright, for eat he dare not until his creditor be 
satisfied ; besides if he were to starve the Brahmin to death, the 
crime Avould be so heinous, that the debtor himself had better have 
departed to the world of shadows. It ensues that sitting dhurna 
is more successful in certain districts than it would be in Belgravia, 
even though the Archbishop of Canterbury himself were to take 
his seat in the middle of the square, with a declaration that he 
would neither move nor eat until eveiy inhabitant in the parish 



344: TABLE TEAITS. 

had paid his Christmas bills. Poor man ! he would have to sit as 
long as infelix Theseus. 

The saints of our puritan days were great favourers of public 
fasts ; but these fasts were less numerous after Ihey had consoli- 
dated their power, than before. " In the beginning of the wars," 
says Foulis, in his " History of the wicked Plots of the pretended 
Saints," " a public monthly fast was appointed for the last Wednes- 
day of every month, but no sooner had they got the king upon 
the scaffold, and the nation fully secured to the Rump interest, but 
they thought it needless to abuse and gall the people with a mul- 
titude of prayers and sermons, and so, by a particular act of their 
worships (April 23, 1649), nulled the proclamation for the observa- 
tion of the former ; all which verifieth the old verses :-— 

*' ' The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be. 
The devil was wellj the devil a monk was he.' " 

George Fox, the father of the Quakers, remarks in his Journal, 
of the Puritans and their fasts : — "Both in the time of the Long 
Parliament, and of the Protector, so called, and of the Committee 
of Safety, when they proclaimed fasts, they were commonly like 
Jezebels, and there was some mischief to be done." Taylor, the 
"Water-poet, compares their fasts to hidden feasts. " They vrere 
like the holy maid," he says, " that enjoined herself to abstain four 
days from any meat w^hatsoever ; and being locked close up in a 
room, she had nothing but her two books to feed upon ; but the 
two books were two painted boxes, made in the form of great 
Bibles, with clasps and bosses, the inside not having one word of 
God in them ; but the one was filled with sweetmeats, the other 
with Avine ; upon which this devout votary did fast wdth zealous 
meditation, eating up the contents of one book, and drinking as 
contentedly the other." Dr. South, in his Sermons, is equally 
severe. He observes that " their fasts usually lasted from seven 
in the morning till seven at night ; the pulpit was always the 
emptiest thing in the church ; and there never was such a fast 
kept by them, but their hearers had cause to begin a thanksgiving 



THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 345 

as soon as they had done." Butler, in liis Hudibras, hints that 
the work of fasting was to be accounted to the faster, righteous- 
ness : — 

" For - 1 is not now who 's stout and bold, 

But who bears hunger best and cold. 

And he 's approved the most deserving, 

Who longest can hold out at starving." 

The fasting of the civilians, however, was made to turn to the 
benefit of the military gentlemen; and, in March, 1644, an 
ordinance was passed for the contribution of one meal a w^eek 
towards the charge of the army. There was by far a more 
considerable liberality of spirit among some of the clergy of the 
time of Louis XIV. than in the Puritan authorities, inasmuch as 
they permitted others to follow clerical example rather than 
precept. The celebrated preacher. Father Feuillot, for instance, 
stood by while "Monsieur" was enjoying an uncanonical collation 
in the middle of Lent. His Highness held up a macaron, and 
remarked, " This is not breaking fast, is it ?" " Nay," said Feuillot, 
" you may eat a calf, if you will only act like a Christian." I am 
afraid that we had not improved at home, in the last century. 
On one of the fasts of that period, Walpole comments after his 
usual gay fashion. " Between the French and the earthquakes," 
he says, in 1*756, "you have no notion how good we are grown; 
nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth, turned up 
with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that Dick Edgecumbe, 
finding a very lean hazard at "White's, said with a sigh, ' Lord ! 
how the times are degenerated ! Formerly, a fast would have 
brought everybody hither; now it keeps everybody away!' A 
few nights before, two men were walking up the Strand, one said 
to t' other, 'Look how red the sky is ! Well, thank God, there is 
to be no masquerade !' " 

An ex-Capuchin has revealed some of the mysteries of the 

house of which he was lately a member, and by this it would 

appear that the Friars of the nineteenth century are as little for 

slender diet as the fine gentlemen of the eighteenth. "These 

15* 



346 TABLE TEAITS. 

Capuchins," he says, "of squalid appearance, clothed in serge, 
with shaven heads and bare feet, presenting the very type of 
humility and self-renunciation, enjoy the luxuries of life with a 
prodigality unknown to you. The poor friars have, with one 
exception, no enjoyment of the things of this world, their only 
worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three carnivals in 
the year, of two or three weeks' duration each. These are the only 
periods at which they can recruit their wasted strength, to enable 
them to resist the mortifications of the rest of the year. During 
these few weeks they have seven courses served at dinner, all 
substantial and choice dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be 
provided. At supper they have five courses. By that hour, in 
spite of their plentiful dinner, they have regained their appetites ; 
and their digestion is again most active. These courses are as 
substantial as those of the dinner, and are despatched with equal 
facility by these men of iron frame and tranquil conscience. . . . 
Lent is arrived ! Well, you must fast, you must mortify the 
flesh, but you must not die of inanition. A good table is 
necessary, or you will suffer too much from contrast \tith the past 
few weeks. You need double the supply that the secular orders 
do when they fast, for your digestion is twice as active as theirs. 
Supper is now a sadly scanty meal ; it consists simply of fish, 
bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish ! not miserable as to 
quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary dish during the 
forty days of Lent, ahvays excepting bread and wine ad libitum. 
Fortunately, the Friars are wise and provident; the slender 
supper is foreseen and provided against at dinner, which consists 
of four dishes. The bottle of good wine is valuable now, or they 
would be overcome with weakness." Such is the testimony of a 
living witness, who pledges his reputation for the truth of his 
depositions. 

I do not know that there is much that is exaggerated in this, 
for from Mr. Saurin, we hear that, in France, well-to-do priests 
mortify the flesh on maigre days by very pretty eating. The bill 
of fare of those saintly men has been known to include soup au 



THE SUPPOET OF SAINTS OF LATER J) ATS. 347 

coulis d^ecrevisse, salmon-trout, an omelette au Thon, that would 
have called a dead gastrmiome to life ; a salad, the very smell of 
which seemed to give eternal youth; Semonal cheese, fruit, 
confectionary, a light wine, and a cup of coffee. By such self-denial 
is heaven gained by modern saints, in orders ; having fair fortunes, 
and looks with the same characteristic. 

The Dominicans of Italy are in no degree behind their brethren 
m France. The late "prior and visitor of the order," who 
recently published his dealings with the Inquisition, thus describes 
his ancient brethren. " They do nothing," he says, " which they 
are bound to do by theii- rules, if these are opposed to their 
inclinations. They profess never to eat meat in the refectory, or 
room for their common meals ; but there is another room near it, 
which they call by another name, where they eat meat constantly. 
On Good Friday, they are commanded by their rules to eat bread 
and drink water. At the dinner hour they all go together into 
the refectory, to eat bread and drink water, but having done so 
for the sake of appearance, they go one after another into another 
room where a good dinner is prepared for them all. I do not 
blame them for enjoying it ; but I blame them for feigning an 
abstinence which none of them intend to keep." These Dominicans, 
honest fellows ! are more hungry than the gods of the old regime 
of whom it is said, — 

" The Gods require the thighs 
01" beeves for sacrifice ; 
Which roasted, we the steam 
Must sacrifice to them, 
Who, though they do not eat, 
Yet love the smell of meat." 

But our poor friend the monk has witnesses in his favour, as 
well as opposed to him. Some men call him a living mummy 
swathed in faith. Another says he is " a moral gladiator wht) 
wrestles with his passions, and either stifles them or is devoured 
by them." A third describes him picturesquely as a sea-worthy 



34:8 TABLE TKAITS. 

vessel moored in a stagnant dock ; and a fourtli dismisses Mm 
contemptuously as a coward who w^on't fight. Even allowing him 
to be all these, it does not follow that he is to be deprived of his 
dinner. If he pays homage with his body to the saints, he has 
earned what is called the mind's daily homage to the body. Din- 
ner should be the peculiar privilege of the monk, for it is as he is, 
in some sense, "the open friend of poverty, the secret foe of 
riches ;" and if dinner be " the breakfast of the poor and the sup- 
per of the rich," it is doubly due to the monk, who can claim it 
by either title. And it must not be supposed that they do not 
know how to enjoy pleasure like sensible men. The Abbe of St. 
Sulpice, a Bernardine monastery in the south of France, once 
invited a party of merry and musical gentlemen from the neigh- 
bouring town to come up to the monastery, and give the monks a 
treat of good music on the fete day of their patron saint. A 
joyous company ascended at early dawn to the monastery ; the 
most remarkable incident connected with which is, that it is 
seated at the edge of a pine forest, from w^hich a hurricane swept 
down, in one night, thirty-seven thousand trees. The visitors 
were received by the cellarer, the abbe not being yet risen, who 
conducted them to the refectory, where they found awaiting them 
a pate as big as a church ; flanked on the north by a quarter of 
cold veal ; on the south, by a monster ham ; on the east by a 
monumental pile of butter ; and on the west by a bushel of arti- 
chokes a la poivrade. All the necessary adjuncts were at hand ; 
and among others, a party of lay brethren ready to wait upon the 
visitors, and very much astonished to find themselves out of bed 
at so early an hour. An array of a hundred bottles of wine 
bespoke the fathers' idea of good cheer ; and the cellarer, having 
bidden them fall-to and welcome, deplored his inability to join 
them, not having yet said mass, — and he then took his leave to go 
and sing "matins." 

» The breakfast was done ample justice to ; after which the visi- 
tors retired to take a short repose, subsequently repairing to the 
church, where they perfornied a musical service with the usual 



THE SUPPOKT OF SAINTS OF LATER DATS. 34:9 

zeal and energy of amateurs, and received modestly tlie showers 
of thanks that descended upon them in return. 

Monks and musicians then sat down to a dinner, — ample, 
admirably cooked, excellently served, and thoroughly enjoyed. 
The abundance that marked it may be judged of by the fact, that 
at the second course there were not less than fifteen dishes of 
roasted meats. The dessert would have made the eyes of a queen 
sparkle ; the liqueurs were choice, and the coffee redolent of 
Araby the Blest. The enjoyment was long and perfect; and by 
the end of the repast, there was not a man or monk present who 
was not in charity with all the world. The " pious, glorious, and 
immortal memory " of St, Bernard was not forgotten among the 
toasts. 

And then came vespers and more amateur music, — probably 
more vigorously performed than in the morning. And after ves- 
pers there was a division of pleasures : some took to quiet games 
at cards, some chose a ramble in the wood, and a few looked in 
again upon their friend the cellarer. As night came on, all again 
drew together, but the discreet abbot retired, willing to allow the 
brethren full liberty on a festival which only came " once a year." 
And to do the brothers justice, they began to make a night of it 
as soon as the superior had disappeared. Jokes and laughter and 
winged words flew about like wild-fire, and the exercise got 
thereby sharpened the general appetite for supper, — a repast which 
was discussed with a vivacity as if the guest had been fasting up 
to that very hour. Wit and wine, and wisdom and folly, were all 
mingled together ; and the oldest of the fathers present, with a 
flush on the cheek and a light in the eye, joined chorus in table 
songs that were not sung to the tune of Nunc dimittis. It was 
when the fun was flying most fast and furious, that a voice 
exclaimed, " Brother cellarer, where is your official dish ?" " True !" 
answered that reverend individual ; " I am not a cellarer for 
nothing ;" — and therewith he disappeared, but speedily returned 
accompanied by three servitors, bearing piles of buttered toast 
and bowls of what worldly men would have called " punch." If 



350 TABLE TRAITS. 

the fun had waxed fast before, it grew fiery now, and fervour for 
the patron saint glowed at the very fiercest heat that punch could 
give it. In the midst of it all, the hour of midnight was solemnly 
tolled out by the convent bell, and the revellers, reverend and laic, 
swang merrily to bed, satisfied with the day well spent in honour 
of St. Bernard. ■ 

I have now spoken of the Dominicans, Capuchins, and Bernar- 
dins. The Franciscans are a not less lively fraternity. When the 
author of Eothen was at the Franciscan Monastery in Damascus, 
he asked one of the monks to tell what places were best worth 
seeing, in reference to their association with St. Paul. " There is 
nothing in all Damascus," said the good man, " half so well worth 
seeing as our cellars ;" and forthwith he invited the stranger to 
" go and admire the long range of liquid treasures that he and 
his brethren had laid up for themselves upon earth." And, adds 
the author, " these I soon found were not as the treasures of the 
miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse ; for day by day, and hour by 
hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses of the cel- 
lar to the uppermost brains of the friars, dear old fellows ! In 
the midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang loud 
and merrily. Their eyes kept flashing with joyous bonfires, and 
their heavy woollen petticoats could no more weigh down the 
springiness of their paces, than the filmy gauze of a danseuse can 
cloy her bounding step." 

Richard the First, as worthless a human being as ever lived, 
bankrupt in every virtue save that of brute courage, in making a 
legacy of his vices, said he would bequeath gluttony to the priests. 
It was rather a compliment than otherwise, for the inference was, 
that they lacked what they were willing to surrender, when he 
could no longer enjoy it. St. Augustin settled this vexed question 
as to what was " good living," when he said, that " the great fast 
was abstinence from vice." And in the true spirit of St. Augus- 
tin's prose, rings the rich rhyme in Herrick's Noble Numbers. 
" Is this," he says, 



THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS. 351 

" Is this a fast to keep 
The larder leane 
And cleane 
From fat of veales and sheep ? 

"Is it to quit the dish 
Of flesh, yet still 
To fill 
The platter high with fish ? 

" Is it to faste an houre ? 
Or ragged to go, 
Or show 
A downcast look, and soure ? 

" No ; 'tis a fast, to dole 
Thy sheaf of wheat, 
And meat, 
Unto the hungry soule. 

" It is to fast from strife. 
From old debate, 
And hate ; 
To circumcise thy life. 

" To show a heart grief-rent, 
To starve thy sin, 
Not bin ; 
And that's to keep thy Lent." 

This is better pMlosophy than that given on a similar subject by 
Montesquieu, who only recommends moderation on the ground 
that it lengthens the term of enjoyment. "I call moderation," 
says Pythagoras, " all that does not engender pain ;" and by the 
maxim of the Hellenized Hindoo, Buddha Ghooros, the saints 
both of the desert and the dining-room may, perhaps, in their 
several ways be condemned. 

In treating of the diet of more modern saints than those of the 
days of martyrdom, I might have noticed the fact, that in not 



852 TABLE TRAITS. 

very remote times, the parsonage-house at Langdale, in Westmore- 
land, was licensed as an ale-house, the living being too poor to 
allow the incumbent to make anything like one upon it for him- 
self. The ale-cask became to the priest, what the fruit of 
the amrite tree was to the Tibetians — the spring of life. This 
Westmoreland ale was accounted a great strengthener, but so 
have many less likely things. But enough of the " saints," good 
men and true the majority of them, earning their right to enjoy 
the rich blessings of God, by fairer means, perhaps, than many of 
their censurers. I know no set of men so well to contrast with 
the saints, as the " Caesars," and we have yet time before supper 
to attend that august company to table. 



THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 353 



THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 

It is a well-ascertained truth, that the Csesars at table by no 
means generally conducted themselves as though they were under 
the influence of a Roman Chesterfield, as regarded their behav- 
iour ; or a Roman Abernethy, as regarded their moderation. Per- 
haps the great Julius was as much of a gentleman in both the 
above respects as any of his imperial successors; and even he 
could reform the calendar with far more eae than he could reform 
himself. 

When he was commanding in the Roman provinces, beyond the 
Italian frontier, he kept two distinct tables. At one sat his inferior 
officers and the Greeks who were in his service. The latter do 
not appear to have epresse d any discontent at not ranking with 
their Roman comrades. At the other table sat none but Romans 
of high state, with such native guests of quality as Caesar chose to 
invite to meet them. He would Avatch his servants as sharply as 
he did the enemy; and on one occasion, having observed that his 
baker had put down to his guests a coarser bread than that which 
he had served to Csesar, he sent the knave to prison, there to 
learn better manners. 

Cajsar was as sober as Sir Charles l^apier, who used to sign 
himself " Governor of Scinde, because I was always a sober man." 
Cato said of Julius, that he was the only sober man who had ever 
attempted to subvert a government : " a cutting sarcasm on all 
preceding patriots." As for sauces, the Duke of Wellington did 
not inspire Francatelli with more despair upon that head, than 
Csesar did his cook. It was immaterial to him whether he had 
sauce to his meat, or not ; and as to the quality, he never con- 
cerned himself about it. He ate, thankfully perhaps, but thought- 
lessly, certainly. His politeness was sometimes ridiculously exces- 
sive, as when he ate up the ointment which had been served up 
instead of sauce, at a table where he was a guest, and where he 



354 TABLE TEAITS. 

was courteously resolved to find everything excellent. But although 
the great Julius vs^as, according to Cato, the only man who came 
sober to the subversion of his country, he had some unsoberly 
habits about him. Thus, when invited to a feast, he used to whet 
his appetite by taking an emetic. This is attested by Cicero, who 
says, in his letters to Atticus, (lib. xiii. p. 52,) "Unctus est; 
accubuit ; ejjLeTCicqv agebat. Itaque edit et bibit ddeiog et jucunde." 
Suetonius agrees with Cato, that Cccsar was moderate with regard 
to wine: — " Vini parcissimum ne quidem inimici negaverunt." 

It is singular that a man who cared so little as he was reported 
to have done for his stomach, should have cared so much about 
the outside of his head. He could eat pomatum, and yet be 
ashamed of the baldness which a proper application of the 
unguent might perhaps have cured. 

Augustus Caesar, who visited prisoners, like Howard, and cut 
off heads like an Algerine Dey, was moderate in his cups, and 
endeavoured to make the people so. When the latter once com- 
plained that wine was not only dear, but scarce, he gravely pro- 
claimed that his son-in-law Agrippa had been looking to the aque- 
ducts, and there was no fear of any one dying of thirst. 

There were seasons, however, when he could be more than im- 
perially extravagant. Witness the little supper he gave to chosen 
guests, all of whom attended in the attire of gods and goddesses ; 
and at which feast he presided in the character of Apollo. The 
wits of the day, who were not invited, denounced this supper as 
an orgy at which decent people would not have been present, even 
if asked. Such stupendous iniquity was said there to have been 
enacted, that the real gods who had at first looked laughingly 
down from Olympus, withdrew one by one behind their respective 
clouds. Even Jove himself, who sat gazing longest, at length 
hurried away from the sight of men, who were greater beasts than 
the privileged gods ! 

Like some of the extravagant and unclean banquets at Versailles, 
this entertainment was given when there was a famine in the city. 
On the following day, the people exclaimed in the streets, " It is the 



THE CiESAES AT TABLE. 355 

gods who have devoured the food." The less fearful than these 
raised an altar to Augustus Phoebus, and there paid mock worship 
to the Emperor, under the title of Apollo the Tormentor. 

It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that could 
find access to the table of Caesar Augustus. He was extremely 
nice with regard to his associates, but he was not so nice with 
respect to keeping his guests waiting for his company. It was 
the maxim of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that it was far less courteous on 
principle to allow hungry guests to be kept from table out of respect 
to one man, than it was to go to dinner without him. So also 
Augustus thought that the many should not be made to wait for 
one ; and, accordingly, he frequently did not appear at table till 
the repast was half over ; and sometimes departed even then, after 
tasting of from three to half-a-dozen dishes, before it was con- 
cluded. 

He was dignified and condescending, enjoyed the jokes of those 
who were bold enough to make them, and encouraged the reserved 
to be bold and jocund too. When jests lacked from either of 
those parties, the master of the Roman world then laughed, as he 
sipped his moderate draught, at the quips and cranks of the hired 
jesters, whose office it was to be cheerful when the guests grew dull. 

It has come down to us that he was a lover of brov/n bread, 
small fish, green cheese and green figs. He was so far intemperate 
that he would never let his appetite tarry till meal-time. He ate 
when he was hungry, and perhaps he v/as right. And yet it was 
but an unedifying sight to see him passing in his chariot through 
the public streets, returning the greeting's of the people v>'ith one 
hand full of bread, the other full of dates, and his almost sacred 
mouth full of both. He was, in fact, wayward in his attentions 
to his appetite, and would occasionally fest till sunset if the caprice 
took^him. As to what is said of him that he sometimes rose frora 
the most sumptuous banquets, leaving the viands untouched, — 
this was perhaps because the edge of his appetite had been alto- 
gether destroyed by brown bread and indigestible fruit. 

In the day-time he quenched his thirst by eating of bread dip- 



356 TABLE TEAITS. 

ped in water, by drinking water itself, or by taking a slice of 
cucumber, lettuce, or unripe apple. His moderation in drinking, 
when he did take up the goblet at the evening repast, is much 
spoken of, but as we hear more of the quantity than of the 
strength of what he drank, it is dij6Scult to decide upon this point 
Suetonius admiringly records that " he never exceeded a quart 
for his share, or if he did, he was sure to throw it up again." 
This is but equivocal praise after all. He was a very great man, 
no doubt, but, demi-god as he almost was, he spelt after the " caco- 
logical " fashion of Lord Duberly ; and he was more afraid of 
lying awake in the dark than any little baron or squire in the 
nurseries of Belgravia and the adjacent squares. 

Tiberius, like his predecessor, treated his soldiers occasionally 
like schoolboys, and when they displeased him, he used to put 
them on a regimen of barley. Tiberius himself was not a profuse 
eater ; he was rather moderate than otherwise, and when gastro- 
nomic extravagancy had reached a high pitch in Rome, he used 
to dine in public, like the kings of France, but, unlike them, upon 
cold meat, as a reproof to the luxury of the times. He was not, 
however, at all moderate in his cups, and the Roman wits, v/ho, 
like those of Paris, used to make merry epigrams on the worst of 
their woes, punningly transformed his names of Tiberius Claudius 
Nero, into Biberius Caldius Mero. He had a reverence too for 
great draughts, and he once raised a common fellow to the office 
of qusestor, simply because he could drink off a measure of three 
pints of wine without drawing breath. Most of the Caesars must 
have been very unsatisfactory people to dine with, but none more 
so than Tiberius, who loved discussion, but if he found himself 
worsted in it, he invariably ordered his opponent to retire — and 
commit suicide. A hot bath and a vein or two opened soon dis- 
posed of an inconvenient adversary. He used to puzzle his guests 
with all sorts of strange questions, such as would puzzle even the 
editor of Notes and Queries to answer. One of these interroga- 
/ tory puzzles was " the name of the song chanted by the Syrens." 
He would not speak the fashionable Greek at table, but conversed 



THE C^ESAES AT TABLE. 357 

in Latin ; and his favourite feat at dessert was to run his forefinger 
tlirough a hard green apple. 

Caligula must have been a most unpleasant person to dine with. 
He entertained himself and his guests with the sight of men tor- 
tured on the rack, and he got up little private executions on those 
occasions to enliven the scene. We read of her Majesty's private 
concerts, and how " Mrs. Anderson " presided at the piano. But 
the Romans only heard of their Emperor's killing fun to frighten 
his guests with, and how his Divinity's private headsman, Niger 
Barbatus, performed, as usual, with his well-known dexterity. His 
frolics were really of a frightful character. It was after a banquet, 
when the capital jest of slaying had failed to make him as merry 
as usual, that he rushed to the sacrificial altar, attired in the dress 
of a victim-killer, that is, with a linen apron for his sole costume. 
He seized the mallet as though he were about to slay the appointed 
victim, but he turned suddenly round on the resident official and 
butchered him instead. And thereat, all who had witnessed the 
frolicsome deed of their master declared that " 'Fore Jove, 't was 
a more capital joke than the last !" His answer to the Consuls 
w^ho ventured to ask the cause of a sudden burst of laughter in 
which he indulged at a crowded feast is well known ; " I laugh to 
think," said the amiable creature, " that with one wave of my 
hand I can sweep all your stupid heads off!" His method of 
loving was equally characteristic. He would fling his terrible arm 
round the fair neck he professed to admire, and express his delight 
that he could cut it off when he pleased. There was the brilliant 
Cesonia ; " I cannot tell," said her imperial lover at a feast, " why 
it is that I am so fond of that girl. I '11 have her put on the rack 
for a quarter of an hour, that she may be compelled to tell me 
the reason." Blue Beard was the mildest of Quaker gentlemen 
compared with this Caligula. A lady might as well have been 
wooed by a boa constrictor. 

Claudius Caesar has hardly had justice done him, as regards 
his general character, but as my office is only to show how he 
looked at table, I must be satisfied with making the remark, and 



358 TABLE TEAITS. 

pass on to Caesar at meat. He was no hero, undoubtedly, for lie 
contemplated suicide, for no better reason than having a pain in 
his stomach after a repast. In this, hov/ever, he did not show less 
courage than Zeno, the father of the Stoics, who having bruised 
his finger by a fall, went home and hung himself. 

He was largely hospitable, and sometimes entertained six hun- 
dred guests at a time. He liked on these occasions to see his 
own children and those of the nobility seated, according to the 
ancient fashion, at the lower end of the table. It is to be hoped 
that they were out of ear-shot of what was being said at the upper 
end. The jokes were sometimes pleasant enough in their way. 
Thus a Roman nobleman having carried hom^e with him a gold 
plate from the imperial table, was gently reminded of this theft 
when, on the next occasion of dining with Claudius, he saw a 
reproachfully vulgar earthenware platter put down before him. 

He was a man of infinite capacity, was the divine Claudius, — 
that is, in gastronomic matters. He was ever ready to devour, 
and always did so greedily. He has been known to have suddenly 
jumped down from his seat in the forum, allured by the smell of 
roast meat issuing from the priest's table, in the adjacent temple 
of Mars. And he would sit down with the reverend gentleman, 
without waiting for an invitation. It must have surely made the 
common-place spectators of the feat broadly smile, just as if the 
twelve judges in Westminster Hall were to leap from their benches, 
and racing across the churchyard, pour into the first house in the 
cloisters where the dinner bell was ringing loudest, and the pran- 
dial odour was most savoury. 

He ate like Baal, and drank like the beast in Fortunatus. He 
did both to repletion ; but his attendants would then tickle his 
throat with a feather, and so, by exonerating his stomach, enable 
the imperial animal to eat and drink again. He contemplated 
making a decree for the benefit of guests at table, which was of a 
Rabelaisian indehcacy, and which probably never presented itself 
to the minds of any other men but Claudius and the Cure of 
Meudon. 



THE C^SAES AT TABLE. 359 

Caligula had more affection for his horse than for anything 
human. He fed him on gilded oats, and the animal was not a 
more beastly consul than many who were appointed to that high 
office. The emperor's dinner parties must have presented a strange 
aspect, when the obsequious senators stood, napkin in hand, to 
wait upon the guests. Fancy the peers of all the politics, and the 
commons of every shade of opinion, all ranged behind the dinner- 
table at Windsor Castle, in the professional uniform of dingy 
white waistcoats and napless black coats, with their thumbs duly 
doubled up in napkins, and all offering anxious service, and " din- 
don a la daube " to our Sovereign Lady and her guests, — fancy 
this, I say, and you will have the very remotest idea possible of 
what the sight was like when the senators changed the plates of 
Caesar. The personages and their qualities are all different, but 
the strangeness of one spectacle could only be matched by that 
of the other. 

ISTero (who. found sport in sitting in an upper gallery at the 
theatre, and flinging down nuts upon the bald head of the praetor 
below) was a very common-place individual at table, but he 
assembled guests about him who were ever ready to consume his 
good things and applaud his good sayings. Galba, his successor, 
was at once gouty and gluttonous. He commenced eating at 
early dawn, and darkness came over him still with appetite unsa- 
tiated. He was as mean, however, as he was voracious. He did 
once so far whip up his liberal spirit as to compel himself to give 
a dinner-party; but when he read the bill of fare, he fairly burst 
into tears at the idea of the extravagance and the expense. And 
yet the most costly dish he could reprovingly point to, when his 
steward challenged him, was a dish of boiled peas ; but perhaps 
they were out of season, and Galba knew he should be asked for 
them at least a guinea a quart ! He would never have been 
guilty of the prodigality of the Emperor Otho, who daily wasted 
more bread and milk in making cosmetic poultices to lay on his 
face than would have served to keep body and soul together in 
half-a-dozen families. The father of Vitellius more gallantly, 



360 TABLE TKAITS. 

when he wished to look well at the centre of his table, was wont 
to besmear himself with a mixture made up of honey and his mis- 
tress's saliva. He of course deemed it impossible to say which 
was the sweeter of the two ingredients. This was even worse 
than Galba, who was, however, essentially greedy; the latter 
emperor could not eat with pleasure unless he had more before 
him than he could digest.. When his stomach cried, "Hold, 
enough !" be used it as the Somersetshire lad did his. " Ah !" 
exclaimed the lad of Wincanton, to certain monitions, — " ye may 
ate, but, 'vor I ha' done, I'll make ye ake worser." Galba, when 
no longer able to eat, lay and gazed at what he hoped to attack 
more successfully after digestion had been accomplished. 

Otho is remembered as being the complaisant gentleman who, 
when ISTero had determined to murder his mother, gave an exqui- 
site little supper to both parties by way of a pleasant preliminary. 
But Otho could at least behave with outward decency, and of this 
Vitellius was incapable. If he walked through the market-place, 
he snatched the meat roasting at the cooks' stalls, and greedily 
devoured it. He was not more reverent even in the temple; 
where, taking advantage of his vicinity to the altar, he would 
sweep the latter of the barley that was on it, consecrated to the 
god, and swallow the same, like the sacrilegious heathen that he 
was. When about to fly from the enemies who had overturned 
his throne, he selected only his cook and his butler to be the 
companions of his flight, and he took the former dear associate 
with him, in his own covered chair. 

The chief table trait which I can call to mind as connected 
with Vespasian is, that once a month he went without dinner for 
a day. Such an observance, he said, saved at once his health and 
his purse. He had so much the less to pay to his purveyor ; and 
in consequence of the fast, less also perhaps than if he had feasted, 
to his physician. Both the sons of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, 
were modest at the banquet. The former had ceased to be a free 
liver before he put on the imperial mantle ; and as for Domitian, 
he could wash down his Malian apple with a draught of water, and 



THE C^ESAES AT TABLE. 361 

tlien address himself to sleep, as though he were a virtuous 
anchorite, and not the most thirsty drinker of human blood that 
ever disgraced his race. 



The five succeeding emperors, — Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and 
the two Antonines, — Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, — 
governed the world during the eighty years which are said, but 
questionably, I think, to have been the happiest years of the human 
race. There is little on record as to how these potentates dis- 
ported themselves at table. Trajan, indeed, is known to have 
been a fearful drinker ; but he loved a quiet, unceremonious din- 
ner, at the house of a friend of modest degree — for there he tip- 
pled and talked to his heart's content, and vdllingly forgot that 
he was Caesar. Hadrian is remembered as the first Roman 
emperor who wore a beard. He had warts on his throat, and he 
did not like that these should be seen by his guests at table. He 
once gave an entertainment which cost upwards of two millions 
sterling, (when Yerus was made Caesar,) and he was sorry for it 
through the remainder of his life. Many a man of far humbler 
degree has committed the same kind of extravagance, and 
experienced the same enduring repentance. Antoninus kept the 
table of a country gentleman ; and Marcus Aurelius dined alone, 
while Commodus, his son, played at his knee. The board of tbat 
son resembled that of Vitellius, and he fell from it one day, full 
of drugged wine administered to him by a concubine, and was 
strangled as he lay beneath the table, drunk, and deserving of his 
fate. 

The modest Pertinax was less happy as emperor than when, as 
a simple oflScial, he had charge' of the provisions of Rome. 
Didius Julianus was deep in the luxuries of the table, and not 
nearly so deep in .wisdom, when he made a bid for the diadem, a 
few uneasy dinners in the palace, and death. Septimius Severus, 
cared less for the splendour of his table than the consolidation of 
his power, but his banquets were choice things, nevertheless. 
16 



362 TABLE TEAITS. 

His SODS, Caracalla and Geta, exemplified their fraternal unanimity 
by keeping different tables. They never sat down together at the 
same board ; and there were two factions in the court, something 
like that of George the Second, at St. James's, and the son whom 
he hated, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Leicester Square. 
Macrinus was a coarse feeder, and in everything he presented a 
remarkable contrast with his successor Heliogabalus. 

Heliogabalus lay on couches stuffed with hare's down, or 
jDartridge feathers, ^lius Verus reclined on couches of lily and 
rose-leaves. The first-named monster had his funny moments ; 
and sometimes he would invite a certain number of bald men, or 
of gouty men, or grey-headed men, and he was particularly 
amused at a company of fat men, so crowded together that they 
could find room only to perspire. " One of his favourite diversions 
consisted in filling a leathern table-couch with air instead of 
wool; and while the guests were engaged in drinking, a tap, 
concealed under the carpet, was opened, unknown to them,- — the 
couch sank, and the drinkers rolled pell-mell under the sigma, to 
the great delight of the beardless emperor." He was the first 
Koman emperor who w^ore garments of pure, unmixed silk. He 
cared little for poets or philosophers ; but he gave liberal premiums 
to the inventors of new sauces, provided these pleased his palate. 
If he disliked them, the inventor was condemned to eat of 
nothing else, until he had discovered a new condiment to win the 
imperial sanction. Heliogabalus and George I. had this in 
common, that they both liked fish a trifle stale. Thus, it is 
known that George never cared for oysters till their shells began 
spontaneously to gape ; and the Oriental master of the Roman 
empire, who made a barber praefect of the provisions, would never 
eat sea-fish except at a great xlistance from the sea, when they 
acquired the taint he loved. His delight then was to distribute 
vast quantities of the rarest sorts, brought at an immense expense, 
to the peasants of the inland country. The table of his successor, 
Alexander Severus, was that of a gentleman. Its master was the 
first Roman emperor to whom that title can be incontestably 



THE C.ESAES AT TABLE. 363 

given ; and lie loved to have around him accomplished guests of 
of all varieties of opinion; and this is much more than can be said 
for that huge and hungry Goth, Maximin. The Gordians brought 
back some of the elegances of social life, which the uncleanness 
and severity of Maximin had banished ; but at both the private 
and public, the humble and the imperial, tables of Rome, there 
must have been small ceremony and permanent fear during the 
brief and troubled reigns of the foolish men who purchased the 
right of dining in an imperial mantle by being speedily enveloped 
in a bloody shroud. Gallienus, alone, shines out upon the list as 
the very prince of cooks ; and if Careme had possessed half the 
enthusiasm which he so warmly affected, he would have named 
his son and heir after this imperial inventor of ragouts^ — who was 
also the accelerator of the ruin of Rome. All the temperance of 
the Gothic Claudius could not restore the remnant of ancient 
moderation, which had been destroyed by that imperial maker of 
stews, the ever hungry and cruel Gallienus. Aurelian failed, like 
Claudius, but the emperor Tacitus was more successful, and the 
descendant of the great historian, even during his short reign, 
roused the nobles to a sense of dignity, and honoured science by 
inviting its disciples to his well-ordered table. 

A subsequent emperor. Cams, was perhaps one of the most 
frugal, by habit and inclination, that ever wore the imperial sword 
upon his thigh. Carus was at once moderate and mirthful. He 
was seated on the grass, supping on dry bread and grey peas, when 
the Persian ambassadors came to him suing for peace. " The 
matter just stands thus, gentlemen," said the emperor, opening his 
. mouth widely, at the same time, to insert a shovel-like spoonful 
of peas ; " if your master does not acknowledge the superiority 
of Rome, I will render Persia," — and here he took off the cap 
which he wore to conceal his entire baldness, — " I will render 
Persia as destitute of trees as my head is of hair." Having said 
which, he resumed swallowing his peas, and left the delegates to 
digest his remark. 

We are accustomed to consider Diocletian dining at Salona, on 



364: TABLE TKAITS. 

the cabbages he had reared there, as an emperor in reduced cir- 
cumstances ; but the truth is, that the palace, gardens, and table 
of the ex-emperor were all of a splendid character, and if his table 
was adorned by the cabbages he had tended to a prize perfection, 
he was far too wise an epicure to confine himself to that dish 
alone. 

The great Constantine appears under a double aspect, and the 
least favourable one is offered to us in his maturer years, when he 
surrendered himself more unreservedly than before to a good 
living, for which he had peculiar facilities at Byzantium, took to 
wearing false hair, and became altogether a ridiculous old dandy 
and hon vivant ; the ridicule of whom, by his clever and unscru- 
pulous nephew, Julian, I am not at all surprised at ; for what is so 
eagerly seized upon by affectionate nephews as the foibles of their 
indulgent uncles ? Julian was possessed just of that scampish sort 
of nepotism which leads the modest young relative to eat an 
uncle's dinners and deride the donor. Julian's own table would 
have gained the contempt of an editor of the Almanack des Gour- 
mands. Its frugality was frigidly parsimonious in its character. 
The philosophic emperor was a vegetarian, and even of vegetables 
he ate sparingly, but swiftly, leaping up, as it were, from dining 
thereon, to hurry to his books or the public business, which he 
quitted reluctantly when the hour of supper summoned him even 
to that more frugal meal than the dinner, which he despatched 
VAth a celerity not at all admired by those who dined with him. 
Nothing disgusted him so much as a gross feeder, and probably 
nothing ever so greatly surprised him as when, on taking posses- 
sion of Constantinople, he found one thousand cooks waiting to 
prepare the imperial dinner ! A thousand cooks for the man who 
could dine on a boiled turnip ! The Constantines had been accus- 
tomed to dine upon birds from the most distant climates, fish from 
the most remote seas; to have a desert of fruits out of their 
natural seasons, and to drink foreign wines cooled in the summer 
snows of the lofty hills. All this was as useless to a man who 
needed but a crust and an apple to calm his appetite, as were 



THE C^SAES AT TABLE. 865 

the golden basins and jewelled combs to an emperor like Julian, 
who seldom washed even his face, and who not only never cleaned 
his hair, but felt the lively luxury of leaving it undisturbed. \ 
Julian in this respect was like x\nthony Pasquin, who was said to 
have died of a cold caught by washing his face. There was a 
famous Irish member of Parliament, who, unlike Julian, was a 
glutton at dinner, but who was remarkable for his rehgious 
abstinence from all ablution. His son was one day standing in 
the bow-window of White's, when the sire was passing down the 
opposite side of the street. I believe it was the noble lord who, 
when Mr. Gunter in the hunting-field remarked that his horse was 
too " hot " to ride comfortably, suggested to the equestrian pastry- 
cook that he should ice him^ — I believe it was the same noble lord 

who, on the first occasion alluded to above, said to " Jack T ," 

" Jack ! what does make your father's hands so dirty ?" " Well !" 
said the old Colonel's afi'ectionate son, "I believe it arises from a 
bad habit he has of putting them up to his face I" And so of 
Julian we may say, that if his hands were innocent of water, his 
famous beard was dirtier than his hands, and that it was not plea- 
sant to lie near the emperor at dinner, unless guardedly ensconced 
to the leeward of his sacred and dirty person. 

If Gratian, who was the first Roman emperor who refused the 
pontifical robe, had lived but as became the master of an imperial 
household, his sacrifice would have had more merit; but the 
emperors of these times had curious ideas as to duties. Thus the 
second Valentinian delighted in giving splendid dinners, but at 
these entertainments he always, himself, fasted ; — a most discou- 
raging course for the guests, — but he thought there was merit in 
the work. But Theodosius was at least as good a man, and we 
know that he enjoyed the sensual and social pleasures of the table 
without excess ; and the same taste was shown by that emperor 
Maximus, who is said to have espoused Helena, the daughter of a 
wealthy Caernarvonshire lord, and to have renewed the popularity 
of boiled leeks in Rome ; and this was a better taste than that of 
Honorius, who took to feeding poultry and eating them, while 



366 TABLE TEAITS. 

Stilicho ruled the empire, and the eunuchs lived on the very fat 
of the land. It was decidedly better too than the taste which led 
Valentinian the third, after dining with Petronius Maximus and 
winning- his money, to carry off his wife; a Tarquinian insult, 
which he paid for, however, with his life. Avitus could indulge 
in such freaks, however, with impunity ; and he not only seduced 
Eoman matrons, but invited their husbands to dinner, where the 
slaves smiled at the imperial raillery directed against them while 
the courses were changing ! His successor, Majorianus, was a man 
of another stamp, and I would fain believe the pleasant anecdote 
which says of him that he went to Carthage in the disguise of his 
own ambassador, and dined with Genseric the king, who was espe- 
cially chafed when he afterwards discovered that he had enter- 
tained, without knowing it, the Emperor of the Romans. 
Anthemius, if he be famous for little else, is at least famous for the 
superb wedding-dinner with which he celebrated the nuptials of 
his daughter with Count Ricimer, a wicked son-in-law who 
devoured the dinners of his " beau-pere," and robbed him of his 
estate ; — no uncommon course for sons-in-law to take. The count 
placed on the uneasy and vacant throne the epicurean Glycorius, 
who, having murdered Julius ISTepos after a banquet, was made 
Archbishop of Milan, as one of the recompenses of the act. And 
then the empire fell into the delicate hands of the weak and beau- 
tiful Augustulus, who could not find wherewith in the treasury to 
maintain a decent table, and who was glad to accept clemency 
and an annuity frotn Odoacer, whereby he was enabled, upon six 
thousand pieces of gold annually, to keep such state in the Castle 
of LucuUus in Campania, that the surrounding gentry visited him 
in shoals, and ate his dinners by way of proof that they looked 
upon him as a man of the highest respectability. 

And this was the end of the " twelve vultures," seen by Romulus, 
foreshadowing the " twelve centuries," more or less, that were to 
mark the duration of the dominion which he founded ; a dominion 
commenced by a hungry adventurer, and which crumbled to 
nothing in the hand of that Augustulus, who was but too rejoiced 
to take in exchange for it, the bed, board, and six thousand a-year 



THE C^SARS AT TABLE. 367 

with which he set up as a hospitable country gentleman, in his 
rustic villa, on the slopes of Campania. 

As for the Caesars of the Eastern Empire, they were rather 
Oriental despots than either Greek or Koman monarchs, just as 
the Byzantines were ever more Asiatics than Europeans. The 
sovereigns, for the most part, ate at golden tables, and were served 
like gods. Some of them, like Romanus, were respectable cooks, 
and more than one was discussing the merits of a new sauce or 
dish, when the Saracens were knocking at the frontier gates of the 
empire. This sort of merry humour indulged in by others may 
be judged of by a single trait of Michael the Drunkard. This 
amiable sovereign started up, one day, from table, ere the imperial 
dinner was well over, and assuming an episcopal dress, he descended 
into the streets followed by his courtiers. The latter bore the 
vinegar and mustard that had been on the Monarch's side-board, 
and mixing the condiments together, they stopped all passers-by, 
compelled them to kneel, and with horrible profanity and mock 
psalmody, administered the Sacrament with the above-named hor- 
ribly compounded elements. Such was one of the Eastern Caesars 
at and after dinner, and the easy Byzantines were not much scan- 
dalized thereat. Indeed, they troubled themselves very little about 
the affairs of government, or the doings of the governors ; and it 
would never have entered the head of a Byzantine subject to say of 
his son what the American citizen once remarked, touching his 
heir, to Mrs. Trollope, namely, that he would much sooner that 
his son got drunk three times a-week than that he should refrain 
from meddling with the politics of his times. 

From the palaces of the Caesars, let us now pass into the mansions 
of miscellaneous majesties, and see how the first gentlemen of 
their respective days comported themselves " at meat." Yes, at 
meat ; for " la viande du Roi " was the consecrated phrase, and 
guards presented arms, and courtiers bowed low, as the king's 
" meat " was solemnly carried to the royal table, or borne to the 
bedside, where it remained under the name of an en cas; " in case " 
the august appetite should be lively before morning. 



368 TABLE TKAITS. 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 

There was an old custom at Pisa, tlie origin of wliich may be 
traced to the anti-judaical days of persecution. On a certain day 
in the year, I believe. Good Friday or Easter Sunday, every Jew 
discovered in the streets, was hunted down by the populace. 
When the game was caught he was weighed, and compelled to 
ransom himself by paying his own weight of sweetmeats. It was 
an advantage, then, at Pisa for a Jew to be of a Cassius cast. It 
Avas different in other days, and climes, with regard to kings. 
Nations used to weigh their monarchs yearly, and if the register 
showed an increase of dignified obesity, great was the popular 
rejoicing thereat. If, on the other hand, the too, too solid flesh 
of the potentate had yielded to irresistible influences, and the 
father of his people exhibited a falling away in his material great- 
ness, the body of loyal subjects went into mourning and tears, and 
deplored the evil days on which they had fallen, when monarchs 
could not be kept up to the old monarchical standard of corpu- 
lency. Kings who cared for the affections of their people were, 
accordingly, disinterestedly solicitous to support their corporeal 
requirements ; for to be fat was to be virtuous, and he was really 
the greatest of monarchs who required the greatest circumference 
of belt. You must understand, however, that if kings encouraged 
their own increase, it was disloyal in the people to imitate them. 
The monarchs of old, in this respect, were like our Henry VIIL, 
who never stinted his own appetite, but who imprisoned the Earl 
of Surrey in Windsor Castle, for daring to touch a lamb chop on 
a Friday. 

The most gigantic of royal feeders placed on the record of 
ancient history, was Thys, king of Paphlagonia, at whose table 
"the entire animal" was served by hundreds. When he fell into 
the power of Persia he exhibited more appetite than grief, and 
banqueted in such a style that the courtiers spoke of it wonder-' 



THEER MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 369 

ingly to their king Artaxerxes. He replied significantly, " Thys is 
making the most of the shortness of life." 

The kings of Persia were but sorry hosts to dine with. Their 
table was in a little recess divided from the outward hall by a low 
curtain. The king sat alone in his alcove, and could behold, with- 
out being seen, the guests in the outer hall. The latter were of 
the highest rank ; mere younger brothers, civilians, and undigni- 
fied people of that sort, sat at meat in the galleries. It was only 
on two or three high days that the king sat at the same table with 
his subjects. -The royalty of old Persia had once a reputation for 
temperance, but to be " royally drunk " was no uncommon charac- 
teristic of his majesty and the princes of the blood. He generally 
made drinking parties of a dozen favourites. These sat on the 
ground, while the king lay on a gold couch, and the conclave 
drank like dragoons, and got infinitely more tipsy. 

In the banquets of state there were a few singularities. Horses 
and ostriches appear in the bill of fare, among a hundred other 
delicacies ; but no guest did more than just taste what was placed 
before him ; and what he did not eat, he carried home with him. 
A dainty bit from the king's table was a present meet for lover 
to make to his lady ; and a wooer who brought a rump steak of 
horse-flesh in his hand, straight from the regal banquet, was 
scarcely a man to be refused anything. 

There was something of grandeur in the banquets of Cleopatra, 
when Anthony dined with her. The service was in gold, and she 
made a present of it to her visitor. On the following day there 
was a new service, and it was again presented to " the favoured 
guest." Antony himself exhibited infinitely less taste at Athens. 
He erected in the public theatre a scene representing the grotto 
of Bacchus, dressed himself like the god, and, with a party of 
followers as worthless as himself, sat down at day-break, in pres- 
ence of an admiring and crowded "house," and got dreadfully 
drunk before breakfast time. And this knave aspired to rule in 
Rome 1 

Alexander, and, as may be seen in another page, Augustus, was 
16* 



370 TABLE TKAITS. 

given to this sort of theological masquerading. The first-named 
accepted banquets from his great officers; and these exhibited 
their taste by having all the fruit on the table covered thickly with, 
gold, which, when the fruit itself was presented to the guests, was 
torn off and flung on the ground, for the benefit of the servants. 
The father of Alexander had shown in his time a better example 
of economy. He had but one gold cup, and to prevent that from 
being stolen, he placed it every night under his pillow, and went 
to sleep upon it. The mad Antiochus, of Syria, was of another 
kidney, for whenever he heard of a drinking bout in his own city, 
he used to order his chariot, and taking with him a measure of wine 
and a goblet, he would rush down to the place and take a seat unin- 
vited. He was such indifferent company, however, that the guests 
could not be prevailed upon to tarry, and even the offer of his 
golden goblet was unable to bribe a man to sit and get drunk with 
a witless king. 

But the most extraordinary meal I have ever heard of was that 
made by Cambes, king of Lydia. He was a great eater, a great 
drinker, and of insatiable voracity. It is told of him that he one 
night cut up his wife and devoured her, and that he awoke the next 
morning, with one of her hands sticking in his mouth. But I 
have little doubt that something of an allegory lies under this 
royal story. Cambes probably had had an argument with this 
consort, — a lady of the sort spoken of by Dr. Young as one who 

Shakes the curtain with her good advice. 

His logic " cut up " her assertions, and thereon he addressed him- 
self to sleep ; but he no sooner awoke in the morning than her 
hand was upon his mouth, to prevent his speaking while she 
reiterated her follies of the previous night. Poor Cambes! he 
cut his throat in order to escape from a too loquacious consort, of 
whom he is accused of being the murderer by the libelling 
Xanthus. 

I may add to the record of these exemplary persons, the name 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 371 

of Dionysiiis of Heraclea, who, through good Hying, fell into such 
a condition of obesity and somnolency that he could only be made 
conscious by running fine gold needles into his flesh. What a 
droll thing it must have been for his morning visitors who found 
the huge mass fast asleep at table ! Shaking hands with hinci, or 
any other equivalent ceremony, would have been useless. They 
accordingly took a gold needle from his girdle and tenderly run it 
into his fat. When it reached a vital point, the. uneasy monarch 
snorted and opened one eye ; and this being taken as an acknow- 
ledgment of their presence, he straightway went to sleep again. 
Ptolemy, the seventh king of Egj^t, was in nearly as deplorable a 
condition, and Magas of Cyrene was perhaps even worse. The 
Ephori, it will be remembered, had a horror, of the Lacedaemo- 
nians getting fat, and to prevent this undesirable consummation, 
the youth were obliged to present themselves undraped to the 
magistrates. Woe to the offenders with prominent stomachs, for 
they had them punched till the owners hardly knew whether they 
stood on their head or their heels, and could not digest a dinner 
for a month afterwards. 

They were beaten almost as badly as the unlucky ofiicial who 
went, in Parthia, by the name of the king's friend. It was the 
duty of this minister to seat himself on the ground at the foot of 
the lofty couch on which the king lay, and from which the 
sovereign flung refuse bits to his " friend." If the latter ate too 
•voraciously, his meat was snatched from him, and he was beaten 
with rods till he had hardly strength left to thank his majesty for 
the entertainment. Of course, if he ate too slowly, he was 
subject to similar castigation. The moral, perhaps, is, that " fast " 
or " slow," it is safer not to be " friends " with the king — of the 
Parthian s. 

But let us turn from the ancient records of how the monarchs 
of old deported themselves at their solemn boards, and contem- 
plate a few^ brief table traits in connexion with the sovereigns of 
more modern times. 

Clovis was a Christian king, but his behsiviour at dinner wag 



372 TABLE TEAITS. 

not always so exemplary as might have been desired. But the 
Chesterfields of his time were not exacting, and they probably 
thought Clovis a gentleman when, on Bishop (St. Gerome) taking 
leave of him after dinner, the monarch pulled out a hair and 
jDlaced it in the bishop's palm ; the civil ceremony was imitated by 
the courtiers, and the prelate left the rude palace with more hairs 
on his hand than he had on his head. 

But dismissing the idea of running regularly through the 
"Tables of the Sovereigns of Europe," and elsewhere, I will 
simply relate such incidents as are exemplary of royal table life, 
without pausing to be very nice with regard to chronological 
order. Thus it occurs to me that Russia, in modern times, 
exhibits as much barbarism as the court of Clovis, where Chris- 
tianity and civilization w^ere, as yet, hardly known. 

When Peter the Great and his consort dined together, they 
were waited on by a page and the empress's favourite chamber- 
maid. Even at larger dinners, he bore uneasily the presence and 
service of what he called listening lacqueys. His taste was not 
an imperial 'One. He loved, and most frequently ordered, for his 
own especial enjoyment, a soup wi'th four cabbages in it ; gruel ; 
pig, with sour cream for sauce ; cold roast meat, with pickled 
cucumbers or salad ; lemons and lampreys ; salt meat, ham, and 
Limburg cheese. Previously to addressing himself to the " con- 
summation " of this supply, he took a glass of aniseed water. At 
his repast he quaffed quass, a sort of beer, which would have dis- 
gusted an Egyptian ; and he finished with Hungarian or French 
wine. All this was the repast of a man who seemed, like the 
nation of which he was the head, in a transition state, between 
barbarism and civilization ; beginning dinner with cabbage water, 
and closing the banquet with goblets of Burgundy. 

Peter and his consort had stranger tastes than these. This 
illustrious pair once arrived at Stuthof, in Germany, where they 
claimed not only the hospitality of the table, but a refuge for the 
night. The owner of the country house at which they sought to 
be guests was a Herr Schoppenhauer, who readily agreed to give 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 373 

Tip to them a small bed-room, the selection of Tvhicli had beeu 
made by the emperor himself. It was a room without stove or 
fire-place, had a brick floor, the walls were bare ; and the season 
being a rigorous winter, a difficulty arose as to warming this 
chamber. The host soon solved the difficulty. Several casks of 
brandy were emptied on the floor, the furniture being first 
removed, and the spirit was then set fire to. The czar screamed 
with delight as he saw the sea of flames, and smelt the odor of 
the Cognac. The fire was no sooner extinguished than the bed 
was replaced, and Peter and Catherine straightway betook them- 
selves to their repose, and not only slept profoundly all night in 
this gloomy bower, amid the fames and steam of burnt brandy, 
but rose in the morning thoroughly refreshed and delighted with 
their couch, and the delicate vapours which had curtained their 
repose. 

The emperor was pleased, because when an emergency had pre- 
sented itself, provision to meet it was there at hand. Napoleon 
loved to be so served at his tables when in the field. He was 
irregular in the hours of his repasts, and he ate rapidly and not 
over delicately. The absolute will which he applied to most things, 
was exercised also in matters appertaining to the appetite. As 
soon as a sensation of hunger was experienced, it must be appeased ; 
and his table service was so arranged that, in any place and at 
any hour, he had but to give expression to his will, and the slaves 
of his Avord promptly set before him roast fowls, cutlets, and 
smoking cofi'ee. He dined of mutton before risking the battle of 
Leipsic ; and it is said that he lost the day because he was sufier- 
ing from indigestion, that he was unable to arrange with sufficient 
coolness, the mental calculations w^hich he was accustomed to 
make as helps to victory. 

As ISTapoleon, the genius of war, was served in the field, Louis 
XV., the incarnation of selfishness and vice, was served in his 
mistress's bower. That bower, built at Choisy for Pompadour, 
cost millions ; but it was one of the wonders of the world. For 
the royal entertainments, there were invented those little tables, 



374 TABLE TEAITS. 

called " servants " or " waiters;" they were mechanical contrivances, 
that immortalized the artist Loriot. At Choisy, every guest had 
one of these tables to himself. ISTo servant stood by to listen, 
rather than to lend aid. Whatever the guest desired to have, he 
had but to write his wish on paper, and touch a spring, when the 
table sunk through the flooring at his feet, and speedily re-appeared, 
laden with fruits, with pastry, or with wine, according to the 
order given. Nothing had been seen like this enchantment in 
France before ; and nothing like it, it is hoped, will ever be seen 
there or elsewhere again. The guests thought themselves little 
gods, and were not a jot more reasonable than Augustus and his 
companions, who sat down to dinner attired as deities. When 
kings ape the majesty of gods, it is time for the people to shake 
the majesty of kings. 

Perhaps Louis XV. never looked so little like a king as when 
he dined or supped in public, — a peculiar manifestation of his 
kingly character. The Parisians and their wives used to hurry 
down to Versailles on a Sunday, to behold the feeding of the 
beast which it cost them so much to keep. On these occasions he 
always had boiled eggs before him. He was uncommonly dexter- 
ous in decapitating the shell by a single blow from his fork ; and 
this feat he performed Tveekly at his own table, for the sake of the 
admiration which it excited in the Cockney beholders. But an 
egg broken by the king, or Damiens broken alive upon the wheel, 
and torn asunder by wild horses, — each was a sight gazed upon, 
even by the youthful fair, with a sort of admiration for the 
executioner ! 

The glory of the epicureanism of Louis XV. was his " magic 
table," and the select worthless people especially invited to dine 
with him thereat. In 1780 the Countess of Oberkirch saw this 
table, even then a relic and wreck of the past. She and a gay 
party of great people, who yet hoped that God had created the 
world only for the comfort of those whom he had honored by 
allowing them to be born " noble," paid a visit " to the apartments 
of the late king " in the Tuileries. There, among other things, 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 375 

she saw the celebrated magic table, the springs of wbich, she says, 
" had become rusty from disuse." The good lady, who had not 
the slightest intention in the world to be satirical, thus describes 
the wondrous article, at the making of which Pompadour had 
presided : — " It was placed in the centre of a room, where none 
were allowed to enter but the invited guests of Louis XV. It 
would accommodate thirty persons. In the centre was a cylinder 
of gilt copper, which could be pressed down by springs, and would 
return with its top, which was surrounded by a band, covered with 
dishes. Around were placed four dumb waiters, on which would 
be found everything that was necessary." In 1789 the Countess 
says, — "This table no longer exists, having been long since 
destroyed, with everything that could recall the last sad years of 
a monarch, who would have been good if he had not been per- 
verted by evil counsels." 

After all, the gastronomic greatness of Louis XV. was small 
compared with that of his predecessor, Louis XIV. The " state " 
of the latter was, in all things, more " cumbersome." To be help- 
less was to be dignified ; and to do nothing for himself, and to 
think of nothing hut himself, was the sole life-business of this very 
illustrious king. A dozen men dressed him ; there was one for 
every limb that had to be covered. Poor wretch ! His breakfast 
was as lumbering a matter as his toilette ; and he tasted nothing 
till it had passed through the hands of half-a-dozen dukes. It took 
even three noblemen, ending with a prince of the blood, to pre- 
sent him a napkin with which to wipe his lips, before he addressed 
himself to the more serious business of the day. 

Louis XIV. could not be properly got to the dinner-table, enter- 
tained there, and removed, without a still more fussy world of 
ceremony, and that of a very Chinese or Ko Ton character. The 
ushers solemnly summoned the guard when the cloth was to be 
laid, and a detachment of men under arms were at once spectators 
and guardians at the dressing of the table. They stood by, 
exceedingly edified, no doubt, while the appointed ofiicers touched 
the royal napkin, spoon, plate, knife, fork, and tooth-picks, with a 
piece of bread, which they subsequently swallowed. This was 



376 - TABLE TKAITS. 

tlie "trial" against poisoning. The dishes in the kitchen were 
tried in the same way, and were then carried to the table escorted 
by a file of men with drawn swords. As the dishes were placed 
on the table, the loyal officials bowed as though some saintly relics 
were on the platter ! 

If there was ceremony at the coming in of the meat, how 
much more was there at the coming in of him who was about to 
eat it ! Unhappy wretch ! what splendid misery enveloped his 
mutton-chop ! He was looked upon as very august, but decidedly 
helpless. Did he wish to wipe his fingers ; three dukes and a 
prince only could present him with a damp napkin ; but a dry 
one might be ofiered him at dinner, without insult, by a simple 
valet. Philosophical distinction ! Changing his plate required 
as much attendant ceremony as would go to the whole crowning of 
a modern constitutional king ; and when he asked for drink, there 
was thunder in heaven, or something like it. The cup-bearer 
solemnly shouted the king's desire to the bufi"et ; and the buffe- 
teers presented goblets and flasks to the cup-bearer, who carried 
them to the thirsty but necessarily patient monarch ; and, when 
he finally received the draught into his extended throat, all loyal 
men present seemed the better for the sight. 

But Louis XIV. was so well-used to this, and much more cere- 
mony than I have space to detail, that it interfered in nowise 
with the comfortable indulgence of his appetite. He was a very 
gifted eater. The rough old Duchess of Orleans declares in her 
Memoirs, that she " often saw him eat four platesfuU of different 
soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a platefull of salad, mutton 
hashed with garlick, two good-sized slices of ham, a dish of 
pastry, and afterwards fruit and sweetmeats!" At the end of 
such a repast as this, this " most Christian " king (very much so, 
indeed !) must have been in something of the condition of the young 
gentleman who vrent out to dine, and who, after taking enough 
for three boys of his size, and being invited to take more, 
answered that he thought he could, if they would allow him to 
stand ! 

The Duchess of Orleans, however, is by no means astonished at 



THEIE MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 377 

the Baal-like ability of the king. Of her own performances in 
that way she says, " I am not good at 1/ing in bed ; as soon as I 
awake, I must get up. I seldom breakfast, and then only on 
bread and butter. 1 take neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, 
not being able to endure those foreign drugs. I am German in 
all my habits, and like nothing in eating or drinking which is not 
conformable to our old customs. I eat no soup but such as I can 
take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear broth ; whenever I 
eat anything of which it forms a part, I fall sick instantly, my 
body swells, and I am tormented with colics. When I take broth 
alone, I am compelled to vomit even to blood, and nothing can 
restore the tone of my stomach but — ham and sausages P'' Poor 
lady ! she reminds me of the converted cannibal Carib, who was 
once sick, and who being asked by a missionary what he could 
eat, answered sentimentally, that he thought he could pick a bone 
or two of a very delicate hand of a young child ! 

At a later period even than that of the Duchess of Orleans 
above-mentioned, the German taste could hardly be said to have 
improved. For instances of this, I need only refer to the 
Memoirs of the Margravine of Baireuth, This lady was the 
daughter of that Frederic "William of Prussia, whose portrait is 
graphically drawn also by his own son, and with additional hght 
and shade by Voltaire. The Princess Frederica subsequently 
married the Princq of Baireuth — a mesalliance which did not dis- 
please her easy parents ; — they were not as proudly vexed at it as 
Isaac and Rachel were at the marriage of their son Esau with the 
daughter of Beeri the Hittite, which certainly sounds as if Esau's 
father-in-law had been a pugilistic publican ; — the Princess 
Frederica, I say, paints a portrait of her father in very broad 
style. He used to compel her and his other children to come to 
his room every morning at nine o'clock, whence they were never 
allowed to depart till nine in the evening, " pour quelque raison 
que ce fut." The time was spent by the affectionate sovereign in 
swearing at them, and he added injury to insult by half-famishing 
them. He begrudged them even a wretched soup made of bare 



378 TABLE TRAITS. 

bones and salt. Occasionally, they were kept fasting the whole 
day ; or, if he graciously allowed -them a meal at his own table, 
the royal beast would s^oit into the dishes from which he had 
helped himself, in order to prevent their touching them. At 
other times he forced them to swallow compositions of the most 
disgusting description — "ce qui nous obligeait quelquefois de 
rendre, en sa presence, tout ce que nous avions dans le corps !" 
He would then throw the plates at their heads ; and, as his chil- 
dren rushed by him to escape his fury, the paternal brute, whom 
it is too much flattery to himself, and too much injustice to the 
brute creation so to name, would strike fiercely at them with his 
crutch, and was eminently disappointed when he failed to crack 
their little, hard, royal, but very dirty skulls. It is known that 
this madman would have slain his own son, " the rascal Fritz," as 
he, " the great Frederic," as the world afterwards was used to call 
him; and little doubt can exist that the great Frederic owed 
most of his great vices, and none of his great qualities, to the 
education which he received at the knees of his infamous sire. 

The history of the German courts abounds in traits connected 
with the table, but I am compelled to go little beyond the 
announcem.ent of such a fact. One or tw^o more, however, I may 
be permitted to notice before finally leaving this section of my 
raultifaced subject. 

Ernest the " Iron " was, perhaps, the least luxurious of his race. 
He mariied Cymburga of Poland, the lady who brought into the 
Austrian family the thick lips, which to this day form a charac- 
teristic feature in the imperial physiognomy. Cymburga cracked 
iier nuts with her fingers ; and when she trained her fruit trees, 
she hammered the nails into the wall with her clenched 
knuckles ! Their table was at once copious and simple. Their 
son Frederic had less strength both of body and judgment. At 
near fourscore years of age. he suffered amputation of the leg, in 
order to get rid of a cancerous affection. He was " doing well " 
after the operation, when he resolved upon dining on melons. 
He was told that such a diet would be fatal to him, as it had 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 379 

already been to one Austrian arcliduke of his liouse. Frederic 
reflected that he would probably die at all events, and that he had 
already reigned longer than any emperor since the days of 
Augustus, namely, fifty-three years. " I will have melons," said 
he, " betide what may 1" He ate unsparingly, and death followed 
close upon the banquet. 

Frederic would neither drink wdne himself, nor allow his con- 
sort to do so, although physicians declared that, wdthout it, she 
was not likely to achieve the honours of maternity. She did 
abstain, and despite what the oracular doctors had asserted, she 
became the mother of Maximilian, a prince who drank wine 
enough to compensate for the abstinence of both his parents. 
His second wife, Bianca of Milan, whom Maximilian the 
" Moneyless " married for her dowry, was, like the lady in 
Young's Satires, by no means afraid to call things by their very 
broadest names ; and she died of an indigestion, brought on by 
eating too voraciously of snails! They were of the large and 
lively sort, still reared for the market in the field-preserves near 
Ulm. If my readers should feel sick at the thought, let them 
remember their juvenile days, and " periwinkles," and be gentle 
in their strictures. Leopold the " Angel," the second son of the 
Emperor Ferdinand, surpassed even his father in abstinence. He 
reared the most odoriferous of plants, but inflicted on himself the 
mortification of never going near enough to scent them ; and, 
poor man ! he thought that thereby he was adding a step to a 
ladder of good works, by which he hoped to scale heaven ! 

The grandson of Ferdinand, Joseph L, was a somewhat free 
liver, and his intemperate diet was against him when he caught 
the small-pox. But the medical men were fiercer foes than his 
way of life ; for when the eruption was at its worst, they hermeti- 
cally closed his apartment, kept up a blazing fire in it, gave him 
strong drinks, swathed him in twenty yards of English scarlet 
broadcloth, and then published, on his dying, that his majesty's 
decease was contrary to all the rules of art. His brother and 
successor, Charles, did for himself what the doctors did for Joseph. 



880 TABLE TEAITS. 

In 1T40 he had the gout, and would go out hunting in the wet. 
He was subsequently seized with what would now be called inci- 
pient cholera, and he would eat — not melons, like some of his 
obstinate and imperial predecessors, but that delicate dish for an 
invalid, mushrooms stewed in oil ! He ate voraciously, and the 
next day symptoms ensued which, he was informed, heralded 
death. Charles, like Louis Philippe, would not believe his own 
medical advisers; and there was some reason in this, for they 
stood at his bed-side, disputing as to whether mushrooms were a 
digestible diet or the contrary. The emperor dismissed them from 
his presence, ordered his favourite mushrooms, ate the forbidden 
" fruit " with intense gastronomic delight, and died in peace. 

The table of the great Frederic of Prussia was regulated by 
himself. There were always from nine to a dozen dishes, and these 
were brought in one at a time. The king carved the solitary 
dish, and helped the company. One singular circumstance con- 
nected with this table was, that each dish was cooked by a different 
cook who had a kitchen to himself! There was much consequent 
expense, with little magnificence. Frederic ate and drank, too, 
like a boon companion. His last work, before retiring to bed, 
was to receive from his chief cook the bill of fare for the next 
day ; the price of each dish, and of its separate ingredients, was 
marked in the margin. The monarch looked it cautiously through, 
generally made out an improved edition, cursed all the cooks as 
common thieves, and then flung down the money for the next 
day's expenses. 

The late King of Prussia was a sensible man with respect to 
his table arrangements. On gala days, and when it concerned the 
honour of Prussia that the royal hospitality should assume an 
appearance of splendour, his table was as glittering and gastro- 
nomic as goldsmiths and cooks could make it. But in the routine 
of private and unofficial life, it was simply that of an opulent 
merchant, something, perhaps, like that of Sir Balaam after he 
had grown rich. Even then he partook only of the least savoury 
dishes, and it was seldom, indeed, that he exceeded a third glass 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 381 

of wine. His example enforced moderation, but it did not mar 
enjoyment, for he loved every man around him to be merry and 
wise. 

His own wisdom he manifested by a characteristic trait in 1809. 
The royal family had returned to Berlin for the first time since the 
war had broken out in 1806. The court marshal, deeming that 
the piping times of peace were going to endure for ever, waited 
on Frederic William, and asked what amount of champagne he 
should order for the royal cellars, " None," replied the king ; " I 
will drink neither champagne nor any other wine, until all my 
subjects — even the very poorest — can afford to drink beer again." 
The incident w^as made public, and the king's poor neighbours 
w^ere especially delighted. Many of them testified their gratitude 
by sending from their gardens or little farms various articles for 
his table. The king ate thereof with pleasure, and did not forget 
the givers. 

I have spoken of his moderation, but here is an additional trait 
from his table worth mentioning. When he came to the crown, 
the grand marshal proposed a more extended list of 'viands for 
the royal table. " Marshal," said the king in reply, " I do not feel 
that my stomach has become more capacious since I became 
king. We will let well alone, and dine to-day even as we have 
done heretofore." 

In another page I have spoken of Bishop Eylert supping with 
the king. Such a guest was not an unfrequent one at the royal 
dining-table. On one occasion the bishop had preached before 
the court in the morning from Luke xiv. 8 — 11 : "When thou art 
bidden of any man to a w^edding, sit not down in the highest 
room, lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him ; 
and he that bade thee and him come and say unto thee. Give this 
man place, and thou begin with shame to take the lower room," 
&c. &c. 

The bishop profited by the opportunity to expatiate on the 
virtues of diffidence and humility, insisting on their observance as 
necessary for the preservation of our happiness. Now, many 



382 TABLE TRAITS. 

dignified officials were present at the banquet in question, and the 
bishop who had entered the saloon last, (which does not say much 
for the courtesy of those who preceded him,) meekly took his place 
at the lower end of the table. There the king's scrutinizing eye 
fell upon him ; and " Eylert," said Frederic William, " I see you 
are self-applying the text from which you preached to us to-day. 
But, if I remember rightly, it is also written, ' Friend, go higher.* 
Come, then, take this chair that is near to me !" and the simple 
but highly embarrassed prelate walked blushingly to the station 
appointed him, and all in his vicinity began to recognise a man 
whom the king himself delighted to honour. 

This anecdote reminds me, albeit it be "rue wdth a diiference," 
of one told of the second of the seven Dukes of Guise, Duke 
Francis. This celebrated individual was, during one part of his 
bloody career, engaged in the service of the Pope, to fight the 
battles of the latter against the King of I^aples. He was not 
successful, and his holiness showered down upon him mordant epi- 
grams and invitations to dinner. He had accepted one of the latter, 
and repaire'd to the sacro-regal board, after a day in the course 
of which he had been engaged serving as acolyte in the Pa2;)al 
chapel, and holding up the trains of very obese cardinals. In the 
banqiieting-hall of the descendant of the poor fisherman, he meekly 
took the lowest seat. He had scarcely done so, than a French 
lieutenant endeavoured to thrust in below him. "How now, 
friend !" said the haughty enough Guise ; " why pushest thou so 
rudely to come where there is no room for thee?" "Marry!" 
said the soldier, " for this reason that it might not be said that the 
representative of a king of France had taken the last place at a 
priest's table !" It was a bold piece of table-talk to so powerful a 
man as Guise, who recovered, and added to his reputation when 
he subsequently regained,^ Calais from the English. Previously 
to this last feat, when the occupation of Calais formed the subject 
of conversation at social boards, there arose the proverbial expres- 
sion applied to the bravest of, untried men, and honourable to tho 
reputation of our own ancestors, — "iJe is not the sort of man to 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 383 

drive the English out of France 1" The proverb died out of 
French eociety from the day when Guise drove old Lord Went- 
worth out of Calais, and cheated his duchess out of the silks which 
he found therein, and in which he attired the courtesans whom he 
inN-ited to his ducal but not dignified table. 

It may fairly be asserted that kings may w^ear as graceful an 
aspect as guests at others' tables, as they do when enacting the 
host at their own. The Prince Regent, dining off the mutton 
which he had helped to cook at Colonel Hanger's, is indeed no 
very edifying spectacle. I will introduce my readers to a royal 
guest of what Hamlet would call " another kidney." 

When the Prussian general Koeckeritz had completed his 
fiftieth year of service in 1809, he was residing in modest apart- 
ments, becoming his celibate condition, near the Neustadt Gate at 
Potsdam. On the dawn of the day of his martial jubilee, he was 
harmoniously greeted by the bands of the garrison; but the 
hautboys did not discourse such sweet music as was conveyed to 
him in a letter from the king, full of expressions of gratitude for 
services rendered by him during a long half-century to the crown. 
At a grand review held in honour of the day, the king embraced 
him in presence of the army, giving in his person the accolade to 
every other faithful soldier who had served as long ; and when 
this had been done, Frederic William not only declared he w^ould 
escort the old w^arrior to his plainly furnished lodgings, but 
requested to be invited to the dejeuner a la fourchette^ which he 
assumed must then be w^anting. " Koeckeritz had the pride of 
Caleb Balderstone, and he turned pale at the idea of exposing his 
domestic economy to the eyes of a king and court. He grew 
eloquent in excuses, protested that he was unworthy of the honour 
designed for him, and piteously muttered an apologetical phrase 
about " old bachelors." " Then w^hy are you a bachelor ?" asked 
the monarch : " I have often counselled you to marry, and this 
very day you shall be punished for your disobedience." " Well," 
said the general, with a sigh, denoting the resignation of despair, 
" if it must be so, I trust your majesty will allow me a few hours 



384: TABLE TEAITS. 

in order to make fitting preparation." Tlie spirit that possessed 
Caleb Baklerstone suggested this petition. " Not five minutes !" 
exclaimed the sovereign ; " you surely have a crust of bread and a 
glass of wine to give to us who are your comrades, and we desire 
no more ! Come along, gentlemen !" 

Of course, no further resistance was to be thought of, and the 
gay and brilliant escort led the grave Koeckeritz along, looking 
very much like a criminal who was about to be hanged with 
riotous solemnity at his own gates. 

But, when he reached those gates, his surprise was extreme. 
The threshold was covered with flowers, the little hall was lined 
with the royal servants in their state suits, and the space in front 
of the house was partly occupied by a score of " trumpets," who 
no sooner perceived the approach of the hero of the day than they 
received him, as our theatrical orchestras do stage kings, with a 
"flourish." It is hardly necessary to add, that when the old 
general conducted his guests within, he found there such a banquet 
as Aladdin furnished his widowed mother with by means of the 
lamp. Everything was there, whether in or out of season ; and 
the rare-looking flasks promised pleasure less equivocal than that 
held out by a Calais Boniface upon his cards, whereon his English 
visitors were told, that " the wine shall leave you nothing to hope 
for !" 

" Oh ! oh !" exclaimed the king, " here is bachelor's fare with a 
vengeance ! Let us be seated, and show that our appetites can 
appreciate what our comrade Koeckeritz has pro^dded for them." 
Monarch and servant, honouring and honoured, sat side by side ; 
and so gay and so prolonged was the festival, that the king 
surprised all those who knew how strictly he lived by rule, by 
ordering the dinner at the palace to be retarded for a couple of 
hours. At that banquet he entertained the veteran, affecting to 
do so in return for the hospitality displayed by the latter in the 
morning. The scene was not without its moving incidents, for the 
king had contrived another surprise whereby to gratify his old 
friend and servant. As the monarch led him by the hand to the 



THETS MAJESTIES AT IIEAT. 385 

dining-room, there sLood before Mm three of the surviving friends 
of his youth ^Yho had fought with him in the Seven Years' War, 
and whom he had not seen for years. The king had got them 
together, not without difficulty; the general joy that ensued was 
as unalloyed as humanity could make it, and never did monarch 
sit at meat with more right to feel pleased, than Frederic William 
on this day of Koeckeritz's jubilee. It was a day that Henri IV. 
of France would have dehghted in. That king is said never to 
have dined better than one evening previous to the battle of Ivry, 
when he was sojourning in a country house under the name of a 
French officer. There were no provisions there, but the solitary 
lady who was the chatelaine intimated that there was a retired 
tradesman who lived near, who was the possessor of a fine turkey, 
and who would contribute it towards a dinner, if he were only 
invited to partake of it. " Is he a jolly companion ?" asked the 
supposed officer. The reply being affirmatively, the citizen and 
turkey were invited together, and two merrier guests never sat 
down with a lady to cut up a bird and crush a bottle. Henri was 
in the most radiant of humours ; and it was when he was at "his 
brightest, that the bourgeois avowed that he had known him from 
the beginning, and that after dining with a king of France, he 
trusted that the monarch would not object to grant him letters of 
nobility. Henri laughed, which was as good as <jonsenting, and 
asked what arms his countship would assume ? " I will emblazon 
the turkey that founded my good fortune," answered the aspirant 
for nobihty. " Ventre Saint-Gris !" exclaimed the king, laughing 
more immoderately, " then you shall be a gentleman, and bear 
your turkey ' en pal ' on a shield !" The happy citizen purchased 
a territorial manor near Alen9on, and le Comte Morel d'lnde was 
not St. conte pour rive. 

The Russian Empress Catherine used to affect the good fellow- 
ship that was natural to the first of the Bourbon kings of France. 
When she dined with the highly honoured officers of the regiment 
of which she was colonel, she used to hand to each a glass of 
spirits before the banquet commenced. At her own table the 
17 



386 TABLE TEAITS. 

number of guests was usually select, generally under a dozen. 
The lord of the bedchamber sat opposite to her, her own seat 
being at the centre of one of the sides, carved one of the dishes, 
and presented it to her. She took once of what was so offered, 
but afterways dispensed with such service. In her days, many of 
the Russian nobility kept open tables. Any one who had been 
duly introduced, and knew not where to dine, had only to call at 
a house where he was known, and to leave word that he intended 
to dine there in the afternoon. He was sure to be welcomed. At 
the present time, the Russians are more civilized and less 
hospitable. 

Jermann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg as 
good, delicate, and " meagre," — the latter being a consequence of 
the continual eating that is going on, and the necessity which 
follows of providing what is light of digestion. The imperial 
household tables in the days of Paul were divided into " stations," 
an arrangement which took its rise from a singular incident, The^ 
late empress, like our own Queen Adelaide, was given to inspect 
the " domestic accounts," and she was puzzled by finding among 
them " a bottle of rum " daily charged to the N"aslednik, or heir 
apparent ! Her imperial Majesty turned over the old " expenses" 
of the household, to discover at what period her son had com- 
menced this reprobate course of daily rum-drinking ; and found, 
if not to her horror, at least to the increase of her perplexity^ that 
it dated from the very day of his birth. The " bottle of rum " 
began with the baby, accompanied the boy, and continued to be 
charged to the man. He was charged as drinking upwards 
of thirty dozen of fine old Jamaica yearly ! The imperial 
mother was anxious to discover if any other of the Czarovitch 
babies had exhibited the same alcoholic precocity ; and it appears 
that they were all alike ; daily, for upwards of a century back, they 
stood credited in the household books for that terrible " bottle of 
riim." Tlie empress continued her researches with the zeal of an 
antiquary, and her labours were not unrewarded. She at last 
reached the original entry. Like all succeeding ones, it was to 



THEIE MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 387 

the effect of " a bottle of rum for the Naslednih ;" but a sort of 
editorial note on the margin of the same page intimated the 
wherefore : " On account of violent toothache, a teaspoonful with 
sugar to be given, by order of the physician of the imperial court." 
The teaspoonful for one day had been charged as a bottle, and the 
entry once made, it was kept on the books to the profit of the 
unrighteous steward, until discovery checked the fraud, — a fraud, 
more gigantically amusing than that of the illiterate coachman, 
who set down in his harness-room book, "Two penn'orth of 
whipcord, Qd.^^ The empress showed the venerable delinquency 
to her husband, Paul ; and he^ calculating what the temporary 
toothache of the imperial baby Alexander had cost him, was 
affrighted at the outlay, and declared that he would revolutionise 
the kitchen department, and put himself out to board. The 
threat was not idly made, and it was soon seriously realized. A 
gastronomic contractor was found who farmed the whole palace, 
and did his spiriting admirably. He divided the imperial house- 
hold into " stations." The first was the monarch's especial table, 
for the supply of which he charged the emperor and empress fifty 
roubles each daily ; the table of the archdukes and archduchesses 
was supplied at half that price; the guests of that table, of 
whatever rank, were served at the same cost. The ladies and 
gentlemen of the household had a " station," which was exceedingly 
well provisioned, at twenty roubles each. The graduated sliding 
scale continued to descend in proportion to the status of the 
feeders. The upper servants had superior stomachs, which were 
accounted of as being implacable at less than fifteen roubles each. 
, Servants in livery, with finer lace but coarser digestions, dieted 
daily at five roubles each ; and the grooms and scullions were 
taken altogether at three roubles a-head. " A wonderful change," 
says Jermann, " ensued in the whole winter palace. The emperor 
declared he had never dined so well before. The court, tempted 
by the more numerous courses, sat far longer at table. The 
maids of honour got fresh bloom upon their cheeks, and the 
chamberlains and equerries rounder faces ; and most flourishing 



388 TABLE TEAITS. 

of all was the state of tlie household expenses, although these 
diminished by one-half. In short, evgry one, save cook and butler, 
was content ; and all this was the result of ' a bottle of rum,' from 
which the Emperor Alexander, when heir to the crown, had been 
ordered by the physician to take a spoonful for the toothache." 

Herr Jermann, who was manager of the imperial company of 
German actors in St. Petersburg, frequently dined at the table of 
the " second station," or officials' table. There were six dishes 
and a capital desert. He describes the " drinkables " as consisting 
of one bottle of red and one of white wine, two bottles of beer, 
one of kislitschi and quass ad libitum. The dinner he speaks 
lightly of, as inferior on the point of cookery to that of the best 
restaurants in the capital. The wine was a light Burgundy ; the 
beer heavy and Russian. The kislitschi must have been a power- 
ful crusher of the appetite, it being a sour-sweet drink, prepared 
from honey, water, lemon-juice, and a decoction of herbs. Quass 
is a plain, cheap beverage, the better sort of which is extracted 
from malt, while an inferior sort is an extract of bread-crusts. It 
is the national drink of the lower orders. A stranger finds it at 
first detestable ; but he not only soon becomes reconciled to it, 
but generally prefers it to any other beverage, especially in the 
brief scorching summer of St. Petersburg, when the cooling pro- 
perties of quass are its great recommendation. 

To talk of the fierceness of a Russian summer seems paradoxical, 
but it is simple truth ; and probably the court of J^aples itself, 
throughout its long season of heat, does not consume so much ice 
as their imperial Muscovite majesties do in the course of their 
slow-to-come, quick-to-go, and sharp-while-it-lasts summer. Nay, 
the whole capital eats ice at this season. Ice is thought such a 
"necessary" of life, that the first question in taking a house is, 
probably, touching the quality and capability of the ice-cellar, 
wherein they pack away as much of the Neva as they can in solid 
blocks. They eat it and drink it, surround their larders with it, 
and mix it with the water, beer, quass — in short, w^ith whatever 
they drink. Nay, more, when there is a superabundance of the 



THEIE MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 389 

material, they place it on their stoves to cool {heir apartments. 
So tremendous is the dust and heat of a Russian summer, that, for 
inconvenience, it is only the opposite extreme of annoyance to that 
experienced in the wintry visitations of frost. The ice-tubs of the 
popular vendors in the streets are enveloped and covered with wet 
cloths, to protect them from the heat of the sun. I need not say 
that this is 7bot the season at which a visitor should resort to the 
capital. St. Petersburg m January, and l!^aples in July, are the 
respective times and places to be observed by those who can bear 
the consequences. 

I do not know what may be the case with regard to the fruit 
eaten at the imperial table ; but, generally speaking, fruit is never 
eaten by a Russian until it has been blest by the priest. Jermann, 
alluding to this custom, j)raises it on sanitary grounds, for, he says, 
the fruit has no chance of earning a benediction unless it be ripe ; 
but if it then be taken to church, the blessing is granted with much 
attendant solemnity. 

I do not believe that the czars were ever accustomed to dine 
in such state as the kaisers. The old emperors of Germany, on 
state occasions, were waited on at dinner by the two happy feuda- 
tory princes of the empire. On one of these occasions, we are 
told that old General Dalzell, the terrible enemy of Scottish Cov- 
enanters, w^as invited to dine with the kaiser, and the prince-waiter 
nearest to** him in attendance was no less a personage than the 
Prince of Modena, head of the house of Este. Some years after- 
wards, the Duke of York (James II.) invited Dalzell to dine with 
himself and Mary of Modena. That proud lady, however, made 
some show of reluctance to sit down en famille with the old gen- 
eral ; but the latter lowered her pride by telling her, that he was 
not unacquainted with the greatness of the princes of Modena, 
and that the last time he had sat at table with the Emperor of 
Germany, a prince of that house was standing in attendance behind 
the Emperor' s chair. 

There were other good points about Dalzell's character; in proof 
of which may be cited his dining with Dundas, an old Covenant- 



390 TABLE TEAITS. 

ing Scotcli laird, who would not forego iiis long prayers before 
dinner, and who especially prayed that Dalzell and his royal master 
might have their hard hearts softened tov/ards the Covenanting 
children of the Lord. When the prayer was ended, and dinner 
about to begin, Dalzell complimented his host on his courage in 
fearing man less than God. The anecdote reminds me of one in 
connexion with a dinner given by a gentleman of one of our 
" Protestant denominations," in honour of the presence of a new 
minister and his bride. Prayer preceded the repast, and it was 
given by the host, who, introducing therein the welcomed stran- 
gers, said, " We thank thee, Lord, that thou hast conducted 
hither in safety thy servants, our new minister and his wife. It is 
thou, Lord, who preservest both man and beast !" This was 
more like a kick than a compliment ; but it only called up a smile 
on the pretty features of the minister's lady. 

Let us now cross the Atlantic, with Cortez and his companions, 
and contemplate Montezuma in his household and at his table. 
Barbarian as the Spanish invaders accounted him to be, he was 
superior in many respects to most of his royal contemporaries in 
Europe. He was not less magnificent than Solomon, and he was 
far more cleanly than Louis XIV. 

On the terraced roof of his palace, thirty knights could tilt at 
each other, without complaining of want of space. His armouries 
were filled with weapons almost as destructive as any to be found 
in the arsenals of civilized Christian kings. His granaries v/ere 
furnished with provisions paid by tributaries ; three hundred ser- 
vants tended the beautiful birds of his aviaries ; his menageries 
were the wonder, and terror of beholders ; and his dwarfs vrere 
more hideous, and his ladies more dazzling, than potentate had 
ever before looked upon with contempt or admiration. His palace 
within and without was a mxarvel of Aztec art. It was surrounded 
by gardens, glad with fountains and gay flowers. One thousand 
ladies shared the retirement of this splendid locality, with a master 
more glittering than anything by which he was environed, — who 
changed his apparel four times daily, never putting on again a 



THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT. 391 

garment lie had once worn, and wlio, eating off and drinking 
from gold, (except on state occasions, when his table was covered 
with services of Cholulan porcelain,) never used a second time 
the vessels w^hich had once ministered to the indulgence of his 
appetite. 

It is said eulogistically of his cooks, that they had thirty dif- 
ferent ways of preparing meat, — a poor boast, perhaps, compared 
with that of the Parisian cliefs^ who have six hundred and eighty 
five ways to dress eggs ! Three hundred dishes were daily placed 
before the monarch ; and such as were required to be kept hot at 
table were in heated eartheuAvare stands made for the purpose. 
And it is even asserted, that this autocrat occasionally killed time 
before dinner by watching the cooking of his \dands, a practice in 
which, according to Peter Pindar, that honest old English king 
used to indulge, who dined off boiled mutton at two, and to whom 
the funniest sight in the w^orld was th'e clown in a pantomime 
swallowing carrots. 

The ordinary dishes of Montezuma consisted of very dainty 
fare ; namely, domestic fowls, geese, partridges, quails, venison, 
Indian hogs, pigeons, hares, rabbits, and other productions of his 
country, including — it is alleged by some and denied by others — 
some very choice dairy-fed baby, when this choice article hap- 
pened to be in season ! In cold weather enormous torches, that 
flung forth not only light but warmth and aromatic odours, lent 
additional splendour to the scene; and to temper at once the glare 
and the heat, screens with deliciously droll devices upon them, 
framed in gold, were placed before the brilliant flame. 

The sovereign sat, like his links, also protected by a screen. 
He was not as barbarous as the most Christian kings of France, 
who fed in public ; nor w^as he personally tended like them by 
awkward Ganymedes of a middle age. Four Hebes stood by the • 
low throne and table of their master, and these poured water on 
his hands, and offered him the napkin, white as driven snow, or as 
the cloth on which the four hundred dishes stood waiting his 
attention. Women as fair presented him with bread ; but even 



892 TABLE TEAITS. 

these fair ministers retired a few steps, when his sacred majesty 
addressed himself to the common process of eating. Then a num- 
ber of ancient but sprightly nobles took their place. With these 
Montezuma conversed; and, when he was particularly pleased with 
a sage observation or a sprightly remark, a plate of pudding 
bestowed by the royal hand made one individual happy, and all 
his fellows bitterly jealous. The pudding, or whatever the dish 
might be, was eaten in silent reverence; and while an Aztee 
emperor was at meat, no one in the palace dared, at peril of his 
life, speak above his breath. Montezuma is described as being but 
a moderate eater, but fond of fruits, and indulging, with constraint 
npon his appetite, in certain drinks which were of a stimulating 
quality, such as are found in countries where civilization and 
luxury are at their highest. 

" One thing I forgot, and no wonder," says Bernal Diaz, " to 
mention in its place, and that is, during the time Montezuma was 
at dinner, two very beautiful women were busily employed making 
small cakes, with eggs and other things mixed therein. These 
were delicately white, and when made, they presented them to 
him on plates covered with napkins. Also, another kind of bread 
was brought to him on long leaves, and plates of cakes resembling 
wafers. After he had dined, they presented to him three little 
canes, highly ornamented, containing liquid amber, mixed with a 
herb they call tobacco ; and when he had sufficiently viewed and 
heard the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the 
smoke of one of those canes, and then laid himself down to sleep. 
The meal of the monarch ended, all his guards and attendants sat 
down to dinner, and, as near as I could judge, about a thousand 
plates of those eatables that I have mentioned, were laid before 
them, with vessels of foaming chocolate, and fruit in immense 
quantities. For his women and various inferior servants, his 
establishment was of a prodigious expense, and we were aston- 
ished, amid such a profusion, at the vast regularity that pre- 
vailed." 

What a contrast with the meal of this splendid barbarian is 



THEIE MAJESTIES AT IVIEAT. 893 

that of princes of the same complexion, but of different race, the 
Arab ! We may fittingly include among sovereigns those Ai-ab 
princes whose word, if it be not heeded far, is promptly obeyed 
within the little circle of their rule. Sldns on the ground serve 
for tablecloths ; the dishes are, in their contents, only the reflection 
of each other, and in the centre of the array whole lambs or sheep 
lie boiled or roasted. The chief and his followers dine in succes- 
sive relays of company. Sometimes the skin is spread before the 
door of the tent, w^hether in a street or in the plain, and the 
passers-by, even to the beggars, invited with a "Bismillah," In 
God's name, fall to ; and having eaten, exclaim, " Hamdalliiah I' 
God be praised ! and go their way. 

Not less may we include, in the roll of Majesty at Meat, those 
Pilgrim Fathers who were the pioneers of civilization and liberty 
in America. Scant indeed was the table of that "sovereign 
people," until they found security to sow seed, and reap the harvest 
in something like peace. The first meal which they enjoyed, after 
long months of labour, disease, and famine, was when they had 
constructed the little fort at Plymouth, behind which they might 
eat in safety and thankfulness. " The captain," says Mr. Bartlett, 
in his " Pilgrim Fathers," " had brought with him ' a very fat 
goose,' and those on shore had ' a fat crane, and a mallard,' and 
a dried neat's tongue.' This fare was, no doubt, washed down with 
good English beer and strong waters ; and thus, notwithstanding 
the gloom that hung over them, the day passed cheerfully and 
sociably away." Such was the first oflScial dinner of the " majesty 
of the people " beyond the Atlantic. 

And having got to the " majesty of the people," I am reminded 
of a " popular majesty," the citizen king, Louis Philippe. He was 
a monarch economically minded, and kept the most modest yet 
not worst furnished of tables. His family often sate down before 
he arrived, detained as he often was by state affairs. When all 
rose as he quietly entered the dining room, his stereotjrped phrase 
was, "Que personne ne se derange pour moi," and therewith 
ensued as little ceremony as when " William Smith " and his 
11^ 



6\)± TABLE TEAITS. 

houseliold sate down to an uncrowned dinner at the little inn at 
Newhaven. 

They who are curious to see how admirably Louis Philippe was 
constituted for making a poor-law commissioner, or a parochial 
relieving overseer, should peruse the graphic biography of the 
king written by Alexander Dumas. Therein is a list, made out by 
the monarch, of what he thought was sufficient for the table of 
the princes and princesses ; and Louis of Orleans condescends to 
name the number of plates of soup, or cups of coffee, that he 
deemed sufficient for the requirement and support of the younger 
branches of his house. It shows that the soul of a crafty " gar- 
gottier " was in the body of the citizen king. But we have not 
yet contemplated the appearance and behaviour of our own 
sovereigns at table, out of respect for whom we now allot a 
chapter, but a brief one, to themselves. 



EjStglish kings at their tables. 395 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 

The utilitarians of history have declared that haL^ our treasured 
incidents of story are myths. Rufus was not slain by Sir Walter Tyr- 
rell ; Richard III. was a marvellously proper man ; and the young 
princess w^as not smothered in the Tower. They have laid their 
hands on our legends, as Augustus did on the nose of the dead 
Alexander, and with the same effect, — under the touch it crumbled 
into dust. The infidels refuse even to have faith in that table trait 
of Alfred, which showed him making cakes, or rather marring 
them, in the neat-herd's cottage. Mr. Wilkie may have prettily 
painted the incident, but its existence, anywhere but on canvass 
and in the poet's brain, they ruthlessly deny. I do not know but 
they are right. 

We march into the bowels of more trustworthy ground, when 
w^e pass the frontier of the Roman period. William the Norman 
we know had a huge appetite for venison ; and the Saxon chroni- 
cler says, that he loved the " high deer " as if he had been their 
father, which is but an equivocal compliment to his paternal affec- 
tion. His table indulgences cost the life of hundreds, and the 
ruin of tens of hundreds. It brought on corpulency ; his corpu- 
lency begot a poor joke in Philip of France ; and of this joke 
was born such wrath in the soul of William, that he carried fire 
and sword into that kingdom, and was cut short in his career, ere 
he had accomplished the full, measure of his revenge. 

Rufus was as fat as his father, and as majestic both in his oaths 
and his appetites. To every passion he yielded himself a slave ; 
and he feasted, like so many who would afiect to be dis- 
gusted at his dishonesty, without troubling himself as to who 
"suffered." He never paid a creditor whom he could cheat; 
and again, like many of the same class, he was most aftable at 
table ; his drinking companions were on an equality with him ; 
. and in such fellowship, over gross food and huge goblets mantling 
to the brim, he cut unclean jokes on his own unclean deeds, at 



396 TABLE TEAITS. 

wMcli his servile and drunken hearers roared consumedly, and 
swore he was a god. There was some grandeur in his ideas, how- 
ever, for he built Westminster Hall, as a vestibule to a palace 
wherein he intended to hold high revel, such as the world had 
never seen ; and a vestibule it has now become, but to a palace 
wherein sits a different sort of dignity to that dreamed of by the 
low-statured, fat, fierce, and huge feeding Rufus. 

All the Norman kings were fearful objects at which to fling 
jokes ; and the appetite of Henry I. was ruined, and his sanguin- 
ary ire aroused, by a derisive passage in a poem by Luke de Barre. 
The king made the table shake as he declared that he would let 
wretched versifiers know what they were to expect if they off'ended 
the King of England ; and Barre suffered the loss of his eyes. 
Henry ate and drank none the less joyously for the deed. But 
Beauclerc was a more refined gastronome than his brothers, as 
befitted his name ; and though in many respects his court was 
horribly licentious, yet when he went from one demesne to 
another, to consume its revenues upon the spot, the feasting there 
seems to have been attended by as much moderation as merriment. 

Stephen had more to do with fighting than feasting, and with 
keeping castles rather than cooks ; but he knew how to gain allies 
by the fine science of giving dinners, and there was no more cour- 
teous host than he. While the king and the barons kept high 
mirth, however, the people were in the lowest misery. While the 
king gave political feasts, his subjects were perishing of starvation 
by thousands. 

His successor, the Second Henry, was but a poor patron of 
cooks, as was to be expected of a monarch who had continually 
to defend himself against the rebellions, not only of subjects, but 
of his own children. Of the latter, the only one who loved him 
was his natural son Geoffrey. It is no wonder that this melan- 
choly king was the first to do away with the old custom of having 
a coronation dinner thrice every year, on assembling the States at 
the three great festivals. He was ever in the midst of afii'ays ; 
and once he fell among a body of monks, who checked their tur- 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIK TABLES. 397 

bulence to complain to the Mng ; tlieir complaint being that their 
abbot, the Bishop of Winchester, had cut off three dishes from 
their table. "How many has he left yon?" said the king, 
"Good heavens!" said the monks, "he has only left us ten." 
" Ten !" said the monarch ; " I am content with but three ; and 
I hope your bishop will reduce you to a level with your 
king." They, of course, were highly disgusted at the remark. 

Richard Coeur de Lion, that copper monarch, was too busy with 
mischief to have leisure for much banquetting ; but he loved one 
thing, and that was venison, the poor stealers of which he pun- 
ished by the most horrible mutilations. In his reign, an ox and a 
horse oost four shillings each ; a sow was to be bought for a shil- 
ling ; a sheep, with fine wool, for tenpence, and with coarse wool, 
for sixpence; so that, taking into account the difference in the 
valuation of money, people who had the money to purchase with 
could procure mutton and pork at a rate about a dozen times 
cheaper than the same articles can be procured at now. The 
sovereign did not trouble himself about paying anybody; and 
when he gave a banquet, the very last thing he thought of was 
whether it were ever paid for or not. 

Richard had no virtue but courage ; and John resembled his 
worthless brother in everything hut courage. He had the same 
love for venison ; and a joke at dinner upon a fat haunch, which 
he said had come from a noble beast that had never heard mass, 
w^as looked upon by the clerical gentlemen present as a reflection 
upon their corpulency. They never forgot it; and it was, per- 
haps, partly a consequence of their retentive memory, that the 
monks of Swineshead poisoned the dish of which the king partook 
on the occasion of almost his last dinner. He certainly never 
enjoyed another. 

Henry HI. was the first of our kings whose reign exceeded half- 
a-century in duration. He was a moderate man, loved plain fare, 
and cared more for masses than merriment. He was an easy, 
indolent monarch, with troubles enough to have fired him to 
activity ; but he would have given half his realm for the priNdlege 



398 TABLE TBAITS. 

of daily dir.iiip; in peace and quietnes?;, a boon seldom vouclisafed 
to him. His subjects must have dined as ill as himself, if we may- 
judge by the extraordinary variation of the prices of articles of 
consumption during his reign. Thus the price of wheat, for 
instance, varied from one shilling to a pound a quarter. The 
royal statute upon ale rather displeased all citizens of this period, 
for by it the price w^as fixed at a halfpenny per gallon in cities, 
while in the country the same quantity might be sold for a farthing. 
A gallon of ale for a halfpenny ought, however, to have satisfied 
the most thirsty of drinkers. 

The frugal Edward I. very little patronised either eating or 
drinking, beyond what nature required. He was a very moderate 
wdne-drinker, but he exceedingly ofiended those who were other- 
wise, by imposing a duty of two shillings a tun on all wine 
imported, over and above the old existing duty. The unlucky 
Edward H. wsis to the first Edward, what Louis XVI. was to Louis 
XIV., the scape-goat for the crimes of a predecessor and tyrant 
too powerful to be resisted. The banqueting-room of this Edward, 
however, w^as, as is often the case with such princes, oftener used 
than the council-room, and the favourites feasted with their weak 
lord until rebellion marred the festivity. There never was a mer- 
rier reign (despite public calamity) closed by so terrible a murder 
as that of his king, whose last dinner would have almost disgusted 
a dog. 

Edward III. was a gorgeous patronizer of the culinary art ; the 
cooks and his guests adored him ; and Windsor Castle, which he 
built as a fortress and a pleasaunce, is a monument of his pov/er 
and his taste. But his love for good cheer was imitated by his 
subjects to their ruin; and king and parliament interfered to 
remedy by penalty, what might have been obviated by good 
example. Servants w^ere prohibited from eating flesh, meat, or 
fish, above once a-day. By another law, it was ordained that no 
one should be allowed, either for dinner or supper, above three 
dishes for each course, and not above two courses ; and it is like- 
wise expressly declared that soused meat is to count as one of 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEER TABLES. 399 

these dishes. And of these laws I will only observe, that if they 
were obeyed, servants and citizens of the da^rs of Edward III. 
were a very different class of people from what they are at pre- 
sent. 

When it is stated of Richard II. that two thousand cooks and 
three hundred servitors w^ere employed in the royal kitchen, we 
think we become acquainted with the gastronomic tastes of that 
unhappy king. But as he was one of those whose virtues were 
his own, and his vices were of others' making, so this Sardana- 
palian array of cooks was kept up by those who ruled from behind 
the throne, and finally left the king to starve, despite his counting 
cooks by thousands. His chief cuisinier is known only by the 
initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary work in English, 
"On the Forme of Cury." In this vrork, he speaks of poor 
Richard, his royal master, as the "best and royallest viander of 
all Christian kynges." 

Henry IV. kept a princely but not a profuse table. He was the 
first king in England whose statutes may be said to have acted as 
a check on the freedom of after-dinner conversation upon religious 
matters*; for in his reign took place the first execution in England, 
on account of o]>inions connected with matters of faith. The 
household expenses of this monarch are set down at something- 
less than ^20,000 per annum of the money of the time ; and this 
sum, moderate enough, appears to have been fairly applied to the 
purposes for which it was intended. A porpoise was a fashionable 
dish in the time of Henry V., who first had it at the royal table, 
and thus sanctioned its use at tables of lower degTee. Loyal folks 
in those days copied the example set them by their sovereign, as 
they did in the later days of George III. boiled mutton and caper 
sauce, when country gentlemen " dined like the king, sir, at two 
o'clock." But Henry V. was oppressed with debts, and, like many 
men in similar positions, his banquets were all the more splendid, 
and his prodigality was equal to his liabilities. So extravagant a 
monarch bequeathed but a poor inheritance to Henry VI., who 
was occasionally as hard put to it for a dinner as ever the Second 



4:00 TABLE TEAITS. 

Charles was. When Edward IV. jumped into poor Henry's seat, 
he found a host of angry persons who disputed his power, and 
these he took care to concihate by the most powerful, nay irresis- 
tible means that were ever applied to the solution of a difficulty, 
or the removal of an obstruction. He simply invited them to 
dinner ; and, certainly, up to that time England had never seen a 
king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a scale. 
They were marked, however, by something of a barbaric splen- 
dour ; and the monarch, gay and glittering as he was, dazzling in 
dress, and overwhelmingly exuberant of spirits, was more like 
William de la Marck than any more nightly host. In short, 
Edward was but a coarse beast at table. "In homine tarn corpu- 
lento," says the Croyland chronicler, " tantis sodalitiis, vanitatibus, 
crapulis, luxuriis et cupiditatibus dedito," — a sort of testimonial 
to character which neither monarch nor man could be justified in 
being proud of. The young Edward V. is the " petit Dauphin " 
of English history, but with a less cruel destiny, for he was at 
least not starved to death, amid dirt, darkness, and terror, but 
mercifully, if roughly, murdered, and so saved from the long and 
yet unexpiated assassination of the innocent and helpless Louis 
XVII. His murderer sought to make people forget the heinous- 
ness of his crime, by the double splendour of his coronation din- 
ners. The ceremony and the festival took place, not only in 
London, but in York ; and Eichard hoped he had feasted both the 
northern and southern provinces into sentiments of loyalty. A 
curious incident preceded the first dinner, — the anointing of him- 
self and consort at the coronation. There is nothing singular in 
the fact, but there is in the manner of it. Richard and his queen 
stripped themselves to the waist, in order that the unction might 
be more liberally poured over them, — and in Richard's own case 
perhaps for another reason, that the great nobles who were pre- 
sent might see that they were not about to sit down to dinner 
with a sovereign who was as deformed in body as his enemies 
declared him to be. 

Almost all young readers of history take their first permanent 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 401 

idea of Henry VII. from tliat gallant Riclimond, in Shakespeare's 
Tragedy, wlio comes in like an avenging angel, at the beginning 
of the fifth act, and has it all his own generous way, until he sticks 
" the bloody and devouring bear," and sends a note to Elizabeth 
to come and be married. This Elizabeth, by the way, was the 
good mother of Henry VHI., and she was the only woman for 
whom that capricious prince ever felt a spark of pure affection. 
His love and respect for her were permanent, and the fact merits 
to be recorded. But to return to Henry VII., and to conduct him 
to the dinner-table, where alone we have present business with 
him; I do not know that I can find a better "trait" touching 
himself and his times, than one connected with his royal visit to 
York. 

He was received in the city with more than ordinary ceremony, 
and loudly-expressed delight at the sight of his " sweet-favoured " 
face ; " some casting out of obles and v>"afers, and some casting 
out of comfits in great quantities, as it had been hailstones, for joy 
and rejoicing of the king's coming." But I must pass over the 
outward show — how Augustans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and 
Dominicans met him at Micklegate, and how these, with priors, 
and friars, and canons of hospitals, and priests, and knights, and 
noble, and gentle, and simple, accompanied the Monarch to the 
Minster, and thence to the archbishop's palace, where Henry 
resided during his stay in the northern capital. The grandest 
banquet given to him during his sojourn, was in this palace, on 
the eve of the festival of St. George : the great hall was di\":ded 
into a centre and two aisles. In each division there were two 
tables, half-a-dozen in all. The king sat at the centre table 
arrayed in ail the pomp and glory of a king ; — George and garter, 
crown, and England's sceptre. One individual only was esteemed 
worthy of being seated at the same table, namely, the Archbishop 
of York, who was quite as powerful a man, in his way, as Henry 
Tudor himself. Knights carved the joints, and earls waited upon 
prince and prelate. Lord Scrope, of Bolton, because he was a 
Knight of the Garter, served the king with water; another 



402 TABLE TRAITS. 

member of cliivaliy, handed the cup, and the sovereign's meat 
was especially carved for him by a Welsh cousin, Sir David 
Owen. The distribution of the other tables exhibited a judicious 
mixture of priest and layman. At the first table in the centre 
of the hall, (the cross-table at the top being occupied by the king 
and the archbishop) sat two secular dignitaries, the Lords Chancellor 
and Privy Seal, and with them, the Abbots of St, Mary and 
Fountains, with the archbishop's suffragans, other prelates, and 
the royal chaplains ; thus the chief members of the clergy were 
seated in greatest numbers near the king. The second table was 
entirely occupied by lay nobility, earls, barons, knights and 
esquires of the king's body. Of the two tables in the right aisle, 
the city clergy and the Minster choir occupied one to themselves. 
At the upper end of the table were several knights of the garter, 
all sitting on one side, " and beneath them a void space, and then 
other honest persons filled that table." Vf e are glad to fall on 
the term '■'■other honest," or we might have been tempted to 
believe that a distinction was made between honesty and nobility. 
The tables in the left aisle were occupied, one by the municipal guests, 
the second by the judges, " and beneath them other honest persons," 
again. At the rear of the king's table a stage was erected, on 
which stood the royal ofiicer of arms, who cried his "largesse" 
three times, in the usual manner, and doubtless with something 
of the stentorian powers made familiar to us by the late Mr. 
Toole, and the present loud and lively Mr. Harker. "The 
surnape," we are told, " was drawn by Sir John Turberville, the 
knight-marshal ; and after the dinner *there was a voide, when the 
king and his nobles put off" their robes of state, except such as 
were knights of the garter, who rode to even-song, attired in the 
habit of their order ;" and a very fitting close to a feast, — and a 
good example is held forth therein to all who rise from a festival 
without any more thought of being thankful for it, than is implied 
by trying to find out the reflection of their noses in the maho- 
gany. 

The following table story, cited by Southey, furnishes another 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 403 

illustration of social, and, indeed, of political, life about this 
time : — 

"Henry (tlien Richmond), on his march from Milford, lodged 
one night with this friend David Llwyd, at Matha'farn. D^vid 
had the reputation of seeing into the future, and Richmond, 
whether in superstition or compliment, privately inquired of him, 
what would be the issue of his adventure. Such a question, he 
was told, was too important to be immediately answered, but in 
the morning a reply should be made. The wife of David saw 
that her husband was unusually grave during the evening ; and 
having learnt the cause, she said, 'How can you have any 
difficulty about your answer ? Tell him he will succeed gloriously. 
If he does, you will receive honours and rewards. But if it fail, 
depend upon it, he will never come here to reproach you.' " 
Hence, it is said, a Welsh proverb, "A wife's advice without 
asking it." 

Henry VHI. loved to take a quiet dinner, occasionally, v/ith his 
chancellor, " at Chelsea ; and there he would walk in the garden, 
with his arm round that neck which he afterwards flung beneath 
the axe of the executioner. He was given to indulgences of all 
sorts, and with respect to those of the palate, he was well served 
by his incomparable clerk of the kitchen, honest and clever 
William Thynne, who was not a mere clerk of the kitchen, but a 
gentleman and scholar to boot ; loving poetry though he was no 
poet, and editing Chaucer with as much zeal as that with which 
he regulated the accounts of his kitchen clerkship. Henry ate 
not wisely, but too well ; and this huge feeding brought him at last 
to such a size that he could not be moved but by aid of "a 
machine." In other words, I suppose, he could not walk, and was 
compelled to submit to locomotion in a chair. Among the 
sovereigns who assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and who 
were as strangely there together as the half-dozen kings whom 
Candide met at the table cVhbte in Venice, was that monster of 
a man, the King of Wurtemburg. This mountain of flesh dined 
daily at the imperial table, where a semi-circular piece was cut 



404: TABLE TEAITS. 

out of the mahogany, in order that the stomach of the monarch 
might rest comfortably against the table, when engaged in its 
appropriate work. He did not lack wit for abounding in fatness, 
and to him, I believe, is properly attributed the neat saying, when 
he saw Lord Castlereagh in simple civilian's dress, without a star, 
amid the gold lace, gems, jewels, ties, tags, and glittering uniforms 
around him. The king asked who he was, and on being informed, 
he remarked: "Ma foi! il est hien distingue P^ He could not 
have paid the same compliment to the noble Stewart's wife, if it be 
true, as was reported, that at one of the state dinners, or state balls, 
she appeared with her husband's jewelled garter, worn as a 
handeau^ and " Honi soit qui mal y pense " burning in diamonds 
upon her forehead. 

May it not have been the unpleasant effects of Henry's gastro- 
nomic indulgences that made of him a dabbler in medicine? 
Many of his prescriptions in his own handwriting are still extant, 
and some of them are in the British Museum. He invented a 
plaister, and was the concocter of more than one original ointment 
for the cure of indigestion. He also prepared " a plaister for the 
Lady Ann of Cleves, to mollify and lessen certain swellings 
proceeding from cold, and to dissipate the boils on the stomach." 
His majesty in some of his after-dinner ruminations professed also 
to have discovered a remedy for the plague ; the prescription for 
which he sent to the lord mayor. He was very tender of the 
health of Wolsey, when the cardinal little regarded his own. His 
majesty, on one occasion, counsels his minister, if he would soon 
be relieved from "the sweating," to take light suppers, and to 
drink wine very moderately, and to use a certain kind of pill. I 
do not know if Henry's cookery and kitchen at all smelt of 
unorthodoxy before the Keformation, but it is a fact that, when 
Cardinal Campeggio came over here on the business of the divorce 
of Henry and Catherine, he was especially charged by the Pope to 
look into the state of cookery in England generally, and in the 
royal palace in particular. 

The royal table of Elizabeth was a solemnity indeed. But it 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIK TABLES. 405 

was all a majestically stupendous sham. The attendants thrice 
bent their kaee as they approached to offer her the different 
dishes ; and when these ceremonies had been gone through, the 
queen rose and retired to a private room, where the meats were 
placed before her, and she was left to dine as comfortably as the 
dtizens and their wives of Eastcheap and Aldersgate. 

Among the numerous new year's gifts made to Elizabeth, and 
by which she contrived to maintain a splendid wardrobe, gifts of 
good things for her table were not wanting. One of her physicians 
presented her with a box of foreign sweetmeats ; another doctor 
Tvith a pot of green ginger ; while her apothecaries gave her boxes 
of lozenges, ginger-candy, and other conserves. "Mrs. Morgan 
gave a box of cherries and one of apricots." The queen's master- 
cook and her serjeant of the pastry presented her with various 
ejonfectionery and preserves. 

Elizabeth and her " maids " both dined and breakfasted upon 
very solid principles and materials. Beef and beer were consumed 
at breakfast, — " a repast for a ploughman !" it may be said. Alas ! 
ploughmen are content, or seem so, to strengthen their sinews as they 
best may of a morning with poor bread and worse tea. Elizabeth 
made a truly royal bird of the goose, — a distinction which her 
sister Mary failed to give to the cygnet, the stork, and the crane. 
These no more suited the national taste than the Crimean delicacy, 
a Russian oyster, and which all Englishmen who have tasted 
thereof pronounce to be a poisonous dab of rancid putty. Yet 
Russian princes are fond thereof, and Russian sovereigns order 
them for especial favourites ; — just as the Prince Regent, whenever 
Lord Eldon v/as to dine at Carlton-house, always commanded the 
chancellor's favourite dish to be placed near him, — liver and bacon. 

The household expenditure of James I. amounted to £100,000 
sterling yearly ; double the sum required for the same purpose by 
Elizabeth ; and if " cock a leekie " and " haggis " were dishes to 
which his national taste gave fashion, the more foreign delicacies 
of snails and legs of frogs, dressed in a variety of ways, were 
readily eaten by the very daintiest of feeders. The taste of the 



406 TABLE TRAITS. 

purveyors was, however, sometliing clumsy. What would now be 
said if a cAe/*sent up to table four huge pigs, belted and harnessed 
with ropes of sausages, and all tied together to a monstrous bag- 
pudding ? 

The court of James I. was uncleanly enough, but it was made 
worse by the example of the Danish king and his courtiers, on a 
royal visit to the Stuart. " The Danish custom of drinking healths 
was scrupulously observed, and in a company of even twenty or 
thirty, every person's health was required to be drunk in rotation ; 
sometimes a lady or an absent patron was toasted on the knees, 
and, as a proof of love or loyalty, the pledger's blood was even 
mingled with the wine." It is well known that the ladies of the 
court, as well as the gentlemen, got, " beastly drunk," in honour 
of the visit of the King of Denmark to his sister, the consort of 
James I. 

James, whose taste in gastronomy was not a very delicate one, 
used to say that if he were ever called upon to provide a dinner 
for the devil, his bill of fare should consist of " a pig, a poll of 
ling and mustard, and a pipe of tobacco for digestion." 

There was more temperance under Charles L, and increased 
moderation under the Commonwealth, when Cromwell's table was 
remarkable for its simplicity. The civic feasts of those days were 
also distinguished by their decorous sobriety ; and it is, perhaps, 
worth noticing that the " show " followed, and did not precede the 
dinner. 

Charles I. was served with a world of old-fashioned ceremony, 
not unlike that which ought to have made Louis XIV. very uncom- 
fortable. The fact, however, is, that both monarchs were pleased 
with the cumbrous solemnities of state. And nothing affected 
our English king more in his fallen fortunes than the rude service 
which he received at the hands of the Puritan Servitors of whose 
masters he was the captive. When he was in durance at Windsor, 
his meat was brought to him uncovered, and carried without any 
observance of respectful form, by the common soldiers. No trial 
or " say " of the meats was made ; no cup presented on the knee. 



*:NGLISH KIJSIGS AT THEIK TABLES. 407 

This absence of ceremony wounded Charles to the very quick. It 
chafed him more than greater sorrows did subsequently. It was, 
he observed, the refusal to him of a service which was paid, accord- 
ing to ancient custom, to many of his subjects ; and rather than 
submit to the humiliation, he chose to diminish the number of 
dishes, and to take his meals in strict privacy. 

There are few kings who had such variety of experience in mat- 
ters of the table as Charles II. The first spoonful of medicine that 
was offered him he resisted with a determined aversion which 
never left him for that sort oi pabulum. His table was but simple 
enough during the latter years of his father, but it was worse after 
the fatal day of Worcester. He was glad then, at White Lady's, 
to eat " bread and cheese, such as we could get, it being just begin- 
ing to be day ;" and " bread, cheese, small beer, and nothing else," 
suflSced him in the oak. Bread, butter, ale and sack, he swallowed 
in country inns, and seemed rather to look on the masquerade and 
the meals as a joke. 

When he was lying hid in Spring Coppice, the goodwife Yates 
brought to his most sacred majesty " a mess of milk, some butter, 
and eggs," — better fare than the parched peas which were found, 
in after days, in the pocket of the fugitive Monmouth. The women 
provided for Mm as tenderly in his hour of hunger and trial, as 
their ebony sisters did for Mungo Park in his African solitude. 
When Charles arrived at the house at Boscobel, he " ate bread 
and cheese heartily," and (as an extraordinary,) William Pende- 
rell's wife made his majesty a posset of fine milk and small beer, 
and got ready some warm water to wash his feet, not only extremely 
dirty, but much galled with travel." The king, in return, called 
the lady "my dame Joan," and the condescension quickened her 
hospitality ; for shortly after, she " provided some chickens for his 
majesty's supper, a dainty he had not lately been acquainted with. 
But the king and his followers not only longed for more substantial 
fare, but were not very scrupulous as to the means of obtaining it. 
Colonel Carlis, for instance, went into the sheepcot of a farmer 
residing near Boscobel, and like an impudent as well as a hungry 



4:08 TABLE TEAITS. 

thief " lie chose one of the best sheep, sticks him with his dagger, 
then sends William for the mutton, who brings him home on his 
back." The next morning was a Sunday morning, and Charles, 
having muttered his prayers, went eagerly to the parlour to look 
after the stolen mutton. It was hardly cold, but Will Penderell 
" brought a leg of it into the parlour ; his majesty called for a 
knife and a trencher, and cut some of it into collops, and pricked 
them with the knife-point, then called for a frying-pan and butter 
and fried the collops himself, of which he ate heartily. Colonel 
Carlis, the while, being but under-cook (and that, honour enough 
too), made the fire, and turned the collops in the pan. When the 
colonel," adds the faithful Blount, who records this table trait, 
" afterwards attended his majesty in France, his majesty, calling to 
remembrance this passage among others, was pleased merely to 
propose it, as a problematical question, whether himself or the 
colonel were the master cook at Boscobel, and the supremacy was 
of right adjudged to his majesty." Circumstances which made of 
the royal adventurer a king were the spoiling of an excellent cook. 
When he was secretly sojourning at Trent, his meat was, for the 
most part, to prevent the danger of discovery, dressed in his own 
chamber ; " the cookery whereof served him for some divertise- 
ment of the time." The king better understood cookery as a 
science than the machinery of it. When he stood in the kitchen 
of Mr. Tombs's house at Longmarston, disguised as "Will Jackson," 
the busy cook-maid bade him wind up the jack. " Will Jackson " 
was obedient and attempted it, but hit not the right way, which 
made the maid in some passion ask, " What countryman are you, 
that you know not how to wind up a jack ?" Will Jackson 
answered very satisfactorily, " I am a poor tenant's son of Colonel 
Lane, in Staffordshire. We seldom have roast meat, but when 
we have, we don't make use of a jack ;" which in some measure 
assuaged the maid's indignation, l^ever had the sacredness of 
majesty been in such peril since the period when Alfred marred 
instead of made the cakes of the neatherd's angry wife. But 
Charles escaped to his rather hungry exile in France ; — and see, 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES. 409 

how sweet are the uses of adversity ! When this charming prince 
Yv^as restored to the throne, he brought with him two gifts of 
which the nation had heard little for some years ; — one was the 
Church Liturgy, and the other, " God d — n ye," — a fashionable 
phrase which has tumbled from the court to the alley. 

It can hardly be said that Charles, when king, fulfilled the 
requirement which Lord Chesterfield subsequently laid down, 
when he insisted that a man should be gentlemanlike even in his 
vices. When WilHam of Orange came to England as the suitor 
of the king's niece, the Princess Mary, Charles took an unclean 
delight in making the Dutchman drunk. Evelyn says : — " One 
night, at a supper given by the Duke of Buckingham, the king 
made him (William) drink very hard ; the heavy Dutchman was 
naturally averse to it, but being once entered, was the most frolic- 
some of the company ; and now the mind took him to break the 
windows of the chambers of the maids of honour ; and he had 
got into their apartments had they not been timely rescued. His 
mistress, I suppose," adds Evelyn, and it is a strange comment for 
so sensible a man, "did not like him the worse for such a notable 
indication of his vigour." The monarch who made his ]jaulo-post 
successor drunk had little diflSculty to bring the lord mayor of 
London into the same condition ; and the city potentate and his 
" cousin the king " had that terrible " other bottle " together, in 
which men's reason ordinarily makes shipwreck, with their dignity. 
But his majesty, of blessed memory, was a trifle devout after his 
drink, and on the "next morning" he heard anthems in his chapel, 
and by way of devotion, would lean over his own pew and play 
with the curls of Lady Castlemaine, who occupied the next seat 
to that of " our most religious and gracious king." When he 
was pouring the public money into the lap of that precious lady, 
he was leaving his own servants unpaid ; and, on one occasion, 
when these could not obtain their salaries, they carried off their 
royal master's linen, and left him without a clean shirt or a table- 
cloth ! 

The priests with whom Louis XIV. and Louis XV. used to 
18 



410 TABLE TEAITS. 

transact their religion were wont to excuse all the conjugal infi- 
delities of those anointed reprobates by remarking that they ever 
treated their consorts with the very greatest politeness. The 
poets of Charles's days went further, and extolled his marital 
affection. Waller, for instance, congratulates the poor queen, that 
if she were ill, Charles was by to tend and weep over her : — 

" But, that which may relieve our care 
Is, that you have a help so near 
For all the evil you cnn prove ; 
The kindness of your Royal Love. 
He that was never known to mourn 
So many kingdoms from his torn, 
His tears reserved for you ; more dear 
More prized, than all those kingdoms were! 
For when no healing art prevail'd, 
When cordials and elixirs fail'd, 
On your pale cheek he dropt the shower, 
Revived you like a dying flower." 

The illness referred to was a spotted fever ; and here is Pepys' 
plain prose on the subject : — " 20th October, 1663. This evening, 
at my lord's lodgings, Mrs. Sarah, talking with my wife and I, 
how the queen do, and how the king tends her, being so ill. She 
tells us that the queen's sickness is the spotted fever ; that she was 
as full of the spots as a leopard, which is very strange that it 
should be no more known ; but perhaps it is not so ; and that the 
king do seem to take it much to heart, for that he had wept before 
her ; but for all that he hath not missed one night since she was 
sick, of supping with my lady Castlemaine ; which I believe is 
true ; for she says that her husband hath dressed the suppers every 
night ; and I confess I saw him myself coming through the street, 
dressing up a great supper to-night, which Sarah also says is for 
the king and her, which is a very strange thing." Oh, depth of 
royal grief, that required , light suppers and \ighi ladies for its 
solace ! 

The Spectator has preserved for us a pleasant story illustrative 



ENGLISH KIXGS AT THEIE TABLES. 411 

both of royal and citizen good-fellowship, in the reign of Charles 
II., and in the person of the king and that of his jolly lord mayor, 
Sir Robert Viner. The merry monarch had been dining with the 
chief magistrate and the municipality, at Guildhall, where he had 
not drunk so deeply himself but he was aware that the jollity of 
his entertainers was beginning to render them rather oblivious 
of the respect due to their royal guest. He accordingly with a 
curt farewell, slipped away down to his coach, which was awaiting 
him in Guildhall-yard. But the lord mayor forthwith pursued the 
runaway, and overtaking him in the yard, seized him by the skirts 
of his coat, and swore roundly that he should not go till they 
" had drank t' other bottle !" " The airy monarch," says the nar- 
rator in the Spectator^ " looked kindly at him over his shoulder, 
and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time, and 
do now), repeated this line of the old song : — 

'•' ' And the man that is drunk is as great as a king !' 

and immediately turned back, and complied with his landlord." 
This anecdote, however, though it be given on the authority of an 
alleged eye-witness, is probably overcoloured with regard to the 
conduct of his worship the mayor. Mr. Peter Cunningham quotes 
(in his history of Nell Gwyn) from Henry Sidney's Diary, a letter 
addressed to Sidney by his sister the Countess Dowager of Suther- 
land, and which refers to the incident of the visit of Charles to 
Guildhall. The letter in question was written five years after tho 
mayoralty of Sir Robert Viner. " The king had supped with the 
lord mayor, and the aldermen on the occasion had drunk the 
king's health, over and over, upon their knees, wishing every one 
hanged and damned that would not serve him with their lives and 
fortunes. But this was not all. As his guards were drunk or 
said to be so, they would not trust his majesty with so insecure an 
escort, but attended him themselves to Whitehall, and, as the 
lady-writer observes, ' all went merry out of the king's cellar.' 
So much was this accessibility of manner in the king acceptable 



412 TABLE TKAITS. 

to his people, that tlie mayor and his brethren waited next day 
at "Whitehall, to return thanks to the Mng and duke for the 
honour they had done them, and the mayor confirmed by this 
reception, was changed from an ill to a well-affected subject." 

But as this merry mourner lived, so may he almost be said to 
have died. It will be remembered with what disgust Evelyn 
records the scene at Whitehall, a week before the king's decease : 
— "I can never forget," he says, "the inexpressible luxury and 
profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total 
neglectfulness of God, it being Sunday evening, which this day 
sennight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his 
concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarine, &c. ; a French boy 
singing love-songs in that glorious gallery ; whilst about twenty 
of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset, 
round a large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds in 
gold before them, upon w^hich two gentlemen who were with me 
made reflections in astonishment. Six days after, all was in the 
dust." 

There was more meanness, but not more decency, under James 
II., but his queen more deeply resented, and that in public, at 
dinner, the insults levelled at her. When Mrs. Sedly, in 1686, 
was created Countess of Dorchester, the day on which the 
nomination passed the Great Seal, and indeed on a subsequent 
occasion, the queen showed how she was touched by the honours 
paid to a brazen concubine. " The queen," says Evelyn, " took it 
very grievously, so as for two dinners, standing near her, I observed 
she hardly ate one morsel, nor spake one word to the king, or to 
any about her ; though at other times she used to be extremely 
pleasant, full of discourse and good-humour." Such is one of the 
table traits of the time of James II. 

There is little to be said of William III., save that he kept a 
well-regulated table, and was excessively angry if he detected any 
faults in the service. He is described as being kind, cordial, open, 
even convivial and jocose. He would sit at table many hours, and 
would bear his full share in festive conversation. Burnet, I think, 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIK TABLES. 413 

somewhere intimates, but I cannot recollect the precise words, that 
he w^as something more than moderately given to Hollands. As 
much, indeed, has been said of Queen Anne. But Anne was 
inclined to indulge in good living, and her doctor, Lister, had as 
many gastronomic propensities as herself. Lister entered into the 
minutiae of the kitchen with the exactness of an apothecary 
w^eighing poison. On the subject of larks, he says, for the benefit 
of the queen, and all who love such dainty food, that if twelve 
larks do not weigh twelve ounces, they are scarcely eatable ; they 
are just tolerable if they reach that weight ; but that if they weigh 
thirteen ounces, they are fat and excellent ! On such table 
matters did royal physicians write, when Anne was queen. 

The table of George, Prince Regent, was splendidly served. 
The court language was French, as though the days of the 
Normans were come again. But the son of George III., whether 
as prince or as king, and despite his character of being the first 
gentleman in Europe, was not naturally refined. He loved to have 
around him men like Humboldt, who, when his guest, amused him 
with stories as broad as they were long. He himself would tell 
similar stories, even in the presence of his mother and sisters, and 
in spite of a sharp " Fie, George !" and an indignant working of 
her fan on the part of Queen Charlotte. When king, the female 
society which he assembled at the Pavilion v/as very decollete 
indeed, both as regarded person and principles, and the appearance 
of these brilliant looking and light dressed indi\dduals in the day- 
time gave to Brighton an aspect that put Rowland Hill into fits. 
There were joyous evenings then at Virginia Water, on " tea and 
marrow bones," and there was everything there but refinement. 
Refinement, indeed, was not the characteristic of any one prince of 
the house. The Duke of Cumberland revelled in coarse jests, and 
was delighted when they embarrassed the modesty that could not 
even comprehend them. The Duke of Cambridge was perhaps 
the least oftensive of the family. He was the professional diner 
out of the house ; and in his day very few public dinners took 
place without having the advantage of his presence as president. 



414 TABLE TKAITS. 

He was, on such occasions, punctuality itself, and could not 
tolerate being kept waiting. In such cases, he sometimes wiled 
away the time by trying over music with the musical gentlemen 
whose harmony was to relieve the toasts and tedium of the 
evening, but his impatience sometimes got the better of his 
politeness and of his reverence for serious things, and we shall not 
soon forget the effect he produced at a " religious public dinner," 
by exclaiming aloud, " Where is the chaplain ? d — n him ! Why 
doesn't he say grace ?" Before passing to the next reign, we may 
take notice of a fact that is not generally known, but which 
nevertheless cannot be disputed. The coronation banquet of 
George IV. was one of the most splendid upon record. But 
there was a world of " leather and prunella " about it, in spite of 
its reputed splendour. Thus, for instance, the king's table was one 
gorgeous display of gold plate, but the plates and dishes at all the 
other tables, one only, I believe, excepted, were composed of 
nothing more costly than good, honest pewter. The metal was 
indeed so splendidly burnished that to the eye no silver highly 
polished could have been more dazzling ; but the truth remains 
that the peerage that day dined off pewter. But the occasion 
gave value to the material, and the dishes, in their character of 
relics of the glory of the last coronation banquet in Westminster 
Hall, are as highly prized, and as reverently preserved, as though 
they were composed of materials less strange to Potosi than tin, 
antimony, and a trifle of copper. 

Court life, in the reign of William IV., was but of a very sombre 
aspect. The good old king used to indulge in giving toasts after 
dinner, and he made long and somewhat prosy speeches. Of the 
latter he was particularly fond, and he made the then youDg 
Prince George of Cambridge his pupil, by giving the health of his 
father, the Duke, and inducing the son to rise and return thanks 
for the honour conferred. It was no bad discipline for one who 
intended to become a public man. The young prince became a 
very fair speaker under the old king's instructions. William 
* detested politics, and he invariably fell asleep during the dessert. 



ENGLISH KINGS AT THEER TABLES. 415 

It would have violated etiquette to have awoke him; and the 
queen and her ladies never thought of rising until the royal eyelids 
began again to give symptoms of returning wakefulness. He was 
fond of talking, over the wine, of military details, and was proud 
of tvv o achievements connected therewith ; first, that he had made 
Colonel Needham shave off his cherished whiskers, according to 
the new regulations ; and that he had succeeded in having all the 
Waterloo medals worn with the king's head outwards. He 
frequently fell asleep during these conversations ; and then the 
guests quietly passed the wine from one to the other, and, as they 
drank off their glasses, bowed to or smiled at the sleeping- 
sovereign the while. In the evening, there generally was music, 
during which the Queen Adelaide was as generally engaged in 
v/orsted work. The king usually honoured some one with an 
invitation to sit by his side on the sofa. He then fell asleep again, 
and the unlucky, honoured individual, did not dare leave his 
" coign of 'vantage " until the king awoke and gave the signal. 
"William was a very moderate joker, and he loved a joke from 
others. It is reported that, when heir presumptive, he once said 
to a Secretary of the Admiralty who was at the same dinner table, 

" C , when I am king, you shall not be Admiralty Secretary ! 

Eh, Avhat do you say to that ?" " All that I have to say to that, 

in such a case, is," said C , " God save the king !" I have 

heard it further said, that William never laughed so loudly as 
when he v>^as told of a certain parvenu lady, who, dining at Sir 
Jolin Copley's, ventured to express her surprise that there was " no 
pilfered water on the table." 

The dining-tables of deceased monarchs belong to history ; iind, 
consequently, the limit of this imperfect record is to be found 
here. One further illustration, however, of " household " matters 
may here be not inaptly introduced. A few months ago a gentle- 
man, who had been in his early years the personal friend of the 
Duke of Kent, was desirous of sending from Sicily a testimonial 
of his respect to the late Duke's daughter, our sovereign lady the 
Queen. His grateful remembrance took the shape of some very 



416 TABLE TRAITS. 

rare and clioice Sicilian v/ine, the proper transmission of which 
was entrusted to the good offices of a friend of the donor. This 
honorary agent proceeded to the proper office for instructions, and 
there he was somewhat surprised at being informed that, as soon 
as the duty had been paid upon the wine, the latter would be 
forwarded to the "household." At this strange intimation, the 
friendly agent wrote to his principal for fresh instructions, and the 
principal, who had not the slightest intention of showing his 
respect for the memory of a sire by presenting wine to the " house- 
hold " of that sire's royal daughter, at once directed the luscious 
tribute to be divided among friends Vt^ho had households of their 
own, and who could appreciate the present. The rule, with regard 
to offerings like these, was not in former times so ungraciously 
severe. When Mrs. Coutts used to send her pleasant tributary 
haunches of venison to the Pavilion, she was not informed that 
the " household " would condescend to dine upon the venison : on 
the contrary, a graceful autograph note from the royal recipient 
not only made cheerful acknowledgment of the gift, but also gave 
hearty promise that it would be thoroughly enjoyed. There is 
more independence, perhaps, in the present system, which dis- 
courages all tributes, whatever may be their nature ; but there is 
something very ungracious in the method of its application. 

Enough, however, of this matter, or we shall have little time to 
discuss, even briefly, two other subjects, touching which I would 
say something, before v/e are finally called to " supper." The first 
of these comes under the head of " Strange Banquets." 



STRANGE BANQUETS. 417 



STRANGE BANQUETS. 

Under this title I was lialf inclined to include the records of 
the achievement of those gastronomic heroes, whose spirit was 
something Hke that of the boy's who ate with two spoons, and 
cried because he could not swallow faster. But, from Milo and 
his entire bull for dinner, down to Dando and his peck of oysters 
for supper, there is a sameness of very gross detail, and perhaps 
not very great truth in all. The rustic who was victor at an 
eating match, " by a pig and an apple pie," was on a level with 
the ancient kings, who were wont to boast that they could carry 
more beneath their belts with impunity than any other men. So 
the ardour of the two villages contemplating their respective 
champions — gluttons employed for the honour of their several 
birth-places — and the exultation of one party at finding its 
favourite a-head " by two turkeys and a pound of sausages," 
gave proof of as much dignity of humanity as was given in their 
case by those nations of old who weighed their kings annually, 
and had a general illumination when they found their monarchs 
growing fatter. 

These illustrations of table manners, if indeed they deserve to 
be so called, we leave to the j)erusal of those whose devotion is of 
that cast that they would have reckoned Baal as a god, for no 
other reason than the sufficient one given of old, namely, that he 
ate much meat. In more modern times, we have had defunct 
kings who have been supposed capable of consuming as much as 
Baal himself, or any of his lively followers ; for an illustration of 
which fact we must pass over, for a short time, to the once king 
dom of France. 

The last banquet prepared by the culinary oflScers of Francis I. 

for that royal personage, was one at which my readers would not 

have cared to sit in fellowship with the king, nor was it one which 

that monarch himself could be said to have perfectly enjoyed. 

18* 



418 ' TABLE TEAITS. 

He made, indeed, no remark or complaint, but that was for tlie 
natural reason tliat he was dead when he presided at it ! How 
this came to pass I will proceed to relate. 

On the first day of March, 1546, Francis I. died in the Chateau 
de Rambouillet. The whole of the following day his body was in 
the hands of the surgeon-embalmers, who vainly exercised their 
office to render that sweet when dead which had by no means 
been so when living. During six weeks the corpse was deposited 
at the neighbouring Abbey of Haute-Bruyere. It was then trans- 
ported to the house of the Archbishop of Paris at St. Cloud, 
where there was a duplicate "lying in state." The dead king, 
extended on a couch of richly embroidered crimson satin, was 
surrounded by a thickly- wedged mass of priests, who, night and 
day, offered up prayers for the repose of his soul. In the adjacent 
chamber w^as the " counterfeit presentment," or effigy of the 
monarch, made " after nature," reclining on a bed of the most 
gorgeous description, on and about which was displayed all that 
could lend additional solemn glory to the scene. The waxen 
effigy, vnth hands joined, was decked in a crimson silk shirt, 
covered by a light blue tunic powdered with fleurs de lis. The 
royal mantle, of a deep violet, lay across the feet ; and near it 
were the orders, chains, and other "bravery" w^orn by Francis in 
his lifetime. On the head was a violet velvet scull-cap, and above 
that the crown. The legs were thrust into boots of cloth of gold, 
wdth crimson satin soles — but then they were not made for walking 
in. In the room, and particularly near the bed, there was a blaze 
of gold and jewellery, such as dazzled the sight only to look at it. 
The upper portion of the bed was fashioned like a tent. Sentinels 
guarded it from without, and priests kept watch with much prayer 
within. They were of all grades, from cardinals and princes of 
the Church down to bare-footed friars, who would have been more 
thankful for a scarlet hat than for a pair of the newest sandals. 
These were the guests at a banquet where the king was the highly 
honoured host. 

"We are told by old Pierre de Chastel, Bishop of Macon, that 



STEANGE BANQUETS. 419 

the ordinary etiquette of service was rigorously maintained every 
day, during eleven days, as if the king had been living and 
laughing in the midst of them. The royal dinner-table was laid 
out at the side of the bed ; a cardinal blessed the viands ; and a 
gentleman of various quarterings presented to the unconscious 
image a full ewer, wherewith to wash the hands which, folded as 
they were, seemed like those of the father of Miss Kilmansegg, to 
be ah'eady washing themselves with invisible soap in imperceptible 
water ! 

A second gentleman offered, to the representative of the defunct 
king a vase mantling with wine ; and a third wiped his lips and 
fingers, ^ if either could have been soiled by not coming in 
contact with the cates and the goblet ! These functions, and 
others that may very well be passed over, were performed amid a 
most death-like silence, and by the fitful light of funereal torches — 
the only dinner lamps in use, while the dead king was engaged in 
not dining. And such were the clever funeral banquets presided 
over by the waxen similitude of a defunct king. And here it 
should be m.y office to pass to other subjects more immediately 
connected with Table Traits, but I may, perhaps, be pardoned if I 
add, that the royal corpse, after the copious feeding which its effigy 
was mocked with, was raised with incredible pomp, and borne into 
Paris with an attendant mixture of the sublime and the ridicu- 
lous. It was preceded by beggars, nobles, cavaliers, and cooks, 
(" officiers de bouche,") pages, surgeons, and valets de chambre, 
grooms, heralds, and archbishops. The followers behind the car 
were of more uniform and exalted rank ; and when the procession 
reached Vaugerard, it was met by the twenty-four town-criers of 
Paris, who took immediate precedence of the five hundred beggars. 
The funeral service in the cathedral was conducted with similar 
magnificence ; but what is most singular is the fact, that the 
solemn ceremony was no sooner concluded, than it was recom- 
menced with all gravity, for the benefit of the waxen Q^gj that 
had been served for eleven days with an " omelette fantastique !" 
9,nd more than this, two of the sons of the deceased king, having 



420 TABLE TEAITS. 

been previously interred, but with maimed rites, a newly organized 
procession and service took place on this occasion, not Only for 
themselves, but for their effigies also ! There was an ocean of 
holy water scattered on these exaggerated dolls; the aspersion, 
however, was borne with a calmness worthy of their dignity! 
And at these ceremonies the English ambassador, with other 
Christian representatives, appeared on horseback, each with a 
prelate mounted also at his side. The union represented that 
which ought to exist between church and state everywhere, but 
which does not even in the Duchy of Baden. When the 
lengthened solemnities had come to a conclusion, the merry 
pages, as hungry as they were joyous, scrambled for sweetmeats, 
and that was the last of the feasting or fasting of Francis I. 

All this seems barbarous and antique ; it is the former rather 
than the latter. The custom, with some attendant exaggerations, 
is still prevalent in China, where only two years ago the defunct 
aunt of the sun and moon, mother to the reigning monarch, was 
feasted with a solemn parade of magnificent nonsense, the details 
of which make those of the banquet of the deceased Francis look 
extremely poor indeed. I believe that the Chinese idea with 
regard to their poor dead princess was, that she, or the immortal 
part in her, could not possibly take flight upon the celestial dragon 
waiting to convey her to the pagoda— paradise of Cathay — until 
this farewell banquet had been given to her by those who had 
loved her upon earth. 

It is the easiest thing in the world, and perhaps it is the most 
natural, to snaile superciliously at these customs, and dismiss them 
with the definite remark, that they were heathenish and super- 
stitious. But our grandmothers, or their mothers rather, saw 
something very like it in England. In the latter case, it was not 
the consequence of a law that ruled in such matters, but a spon- 
taneous act of a sublimely ridiculous, or a ridiculously sublirne, 
affection. Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, we are told, demon-, 
strated her affection for Congreve in a manner indicative of abso- 
lute insanity. " Common fame reports," says Kippis, in the " Bio- 



STIJANGE BANQUETS. 421 

graphia Britannica" "that slie liad his figure made m'wax, talked 
to it as if it had been ahve, placed it at table with her, took great 
care to help it with different sorts of food, had an imaginary sore 
in its leg regularly dressed, and, to complete all, consulted physi- 
cians with regard to its health." 

An invitation from the duchess to dinner, to meet her simula- 
tive friend, who could hardly be said to have waxed wittier after 
his metempsychosis, would not have been a lively thing. I am 
not sure that I would not rather have been in the place of the 
Hetman of the Zaparogue Cossacks, who was strangely treated and 
dieted when he was elected to the chief command over his own 
Yfild hordes. His followers besmeared (and the fashion is not yet 
obsolete) his face with mud, placed a symbolic baton in his hand, 
and a saucy-looking crane's feather in his bonnet. They then 
gave him a cupful of tar (a process that would have delighted 
Bishop Berkeley), and after pitching greatness into him in this 
manner, he was allowed a draught of mead by way of purifying 
his palate. When Shakspere said, " Take physic, pomp," he was 
little aware of the custom to that effect among the Zaparogues. 
It was sweetened, indeed, by the conclusive draught of mead, as 
Berkeley's dissertation on tar-water was wound -up by a sermon 
on the Trinity ; but I think I would have preferred swallowing the 
tar, with nothing to qualify it but the title, rather than have sat 
down to the most sumptuous of banquets, between the mad duchess 
and her wax lover with an issue in his leg ! 

WilKam Howitt tells of an old countrywoman whom he sought 
to initiate into the simple elements, of religion, and to whom he 
presented a Testament. When the latter had been read through, 
the worthy teacher asked her what she thought of the solemn 
record : " Ah, well !" was the graceless comment, " it all happened 
so long ago, and so far off, that I don't believe a word of it !" 
Some such witticism may, perhaps, apply to my stories just told, 
some of which have distant scenes for their locality, and others 
distant periods for their times of action. But, in the way of bar- 
barous banquets, examples may be cited less open to this objection; 



422 TABLE TEAIT3. 

and if the far-off Zaparogue chiefs have a cruelly nasty inaugura- 
tion into greatness, I do not know if the children in the Scottish 
Highlands, to whom the wise women there administer a mixture 
of whisky and earth as their first food, have not a nastier inaugu- 
ration into life. Having mentioned Scotland, I may, while on the 
subject of strange banquets, show how they cooked and fed in the 
days of Edward HI. " Nor yet had they," says old Joshua Barnes, 
" any cauldrons or pans to dress their meat in ; for what beasts 
they found (as they always had good store in those northern parts), 
they would seethe them in their own (the beasts' !) skins, stretched 
out bellying on stakes, in the manner of cauldrons ; and having 
thus sodden their meat, they would take out a little plate of metal, 
which they used to truss somewhere in or under their saddles, and 
laying it on the fire, take forth some oatmeal (which they carried 
in little bags behind them for that purpose), and having kneaded 
and tempered it with water, spread that thereon. This being thus 
baked they used for bread, to comfort and strengthen their stomachs 
a little when they eat flesh." 

Stomachs that needed no other comforting than this must have 
belonged to men of irresistible arms. They devoured the bullocks, 
and afterwards dressed themselves in the cauldrons. They remind 
us of those nomade people of whom the poet asks, — 

•'"Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel 
Upon the strength of water-gruel 1 
But who shall stand his rage and force, 
[f first he rides, then eats his horse?" 

And this metrical allusion to ancient banquets, and character- 
istic prowess connected with them, recalls to m}^ memory the singu- 
lar story touching the strangest of facts, which has been told in 
choice verse by Ludwig Uhland. The German poet, in narrating 
it, has condemned himself to execute a sort of double hornpipe in 
fetters, having set himself the task to introduce one word, the sub- 
ject of his poem, into every stanza of his rhymed romance. " Done 
into English," the legend runs thus : 



STEAKGE BANQUETS. 423 



THE CASTELLAN OF COUCY, OR THE HEART. 

" How deeply youag De Coucy sigh'd, 
How sad the feeling that came- o'er him, 
And smote his heart, when iii'st he saw 
The Lady of Fayal before him ! 

"How suddenly his song assumed 
The strain of love's impassion'd fire ! 
How every measure clearly told 
His heart vibrated with his lyre ! 

"But vain the sweetness of his song, 
In am'rous cadence softly dying ! ■ 
No hope had he to move the heart 
Of her who heeded not his sighing ! 

"For ever, when beyond his wont 
He fell on some inspired strain. 
The wedded lady's heart scarce moved, — 
It warm'd but to be cold again. 

'' Then was the Castellan resolved, 
The cross upon his cuirass'd breast, 
'Mid toils in Palestine to seek 
The tumults of his heact to rest. 

"And there, in many a hot affray, 
Where perils threat, and dangers thicken, 
He stands till, — 'spite his coat of mail, 
His noble heart with death is stricken. 

" ' Oh ! hear'st thou me, my page ?' he cried, 
' When this fond heart has cea&ed its beating, 
To the fair Lady of Fayal 
Bear it, with De Coucy's greeting.' 

" In cold and conse<;rated earth 

The hero's corpse at length reposes ; 
But o'er his heart, his broken heart, 
Not so the tomb its portal closes. 



4:24 TABLE TRAITS. 

" The heart within a golden urn 
Was laid ; the page received the treasure. 
And quickly sped him o'er the main, 
To do his noble master's pleasure. 

" Now whirlwinds tear, and waters dash, 
Now lightnings rend, and masts are falling 5 
All hearts on board are struck with awe, 
One heart alone's beyond appalling! 

*• Now beams the golden sun again ; 
Now France upon the bow's appearing ; 
All hearts on board with joy are cheer'd ; 
One heart alone's beyond all cheering ! 

'' And soon, through Fayal's frowning wood, 
The page and heart their way are making. 
When winding sounds the lusty horn, 
With hunters' cries the stillness breaking. 

" Then from the thicket bounds a stag, 
Through his heart an arrow flying, 
Checks his course, and strikes him dead, — 
At the page's feet he's lying. 

" And now the Ritter of Fayal, 
Who first the gallant stag had wounded, 
Gallops up with hunting train. 
Who soon the gentle page surrounded. 

" The golden urn had quickly fall'n 
To the Ritter's knaves a welcome booty, 
Had not the boy stepp'd back a pace, 
And told them of his mournful duty. 

" ' Heart of a knightly Troubadour, 
Here is a warrior's heart, I say, — 
The Castellan of Coucy's heart ; 
Let pass this heart its peaceful way ! 



STSANGE BAl^QTJETS. 425 

' ' Dying, my gallant master cried, 
When this heart has ceased its beating, 
To the fair Lady of Fayal 
Bear it, with De Coucy's greeting.' 

" ' That dame I know full passing well !' 
Shouted the knight in deadly passion, 
As from the trembling page he tore 
The urn, iu fierce uncourteous passion. 

•* And with it, grasp'd beneath his cloak, 
Homeward sped the sarage Ritter ; 
The heart close pressed upon his breast, 
Fill'd it with thoughts of vengeance bitter. 

" Scarce at his castle-gate arrived, 
His madden-'d thoughts intent on treason, 
Than straight his frighted cooks are charged 
The heart with condiments to season. 

" 'Tis done ! and richly strewn with flow'rs, 
And lain on golden dish withal, 
'Tis placed before the Knight and Dame, 
When seated in their banquet-hall. 

" The Knight upon the Lady tended, 
Speaking in terms of feign'd delight — ■ 
* Of all the produce of my chase, 
This heart is yours, fair dame, by right V 

" But scarcely had the Lady tasted 
Of the dainty placed before her^ . 
When impulse, strong and strange, to weep, 
Irresistibly came o'er her. 

" On marking which the RUter cried, 
With wild and savage laugh unholy, 
' Do pigeons' hearts, my faithful Dame, 
Give tendency to melancholy ? 



420 TABLE TEAITS. 

" * Then how much more, Lady mine, 
Must fare like this such passion raise — 
The Castellan of Coucy's heart, 
Whose lyre was wont to sound thy praise V 

" And when the Knight v/ith stern reproof, 
Had ceased thus sneering to upbraid, he 
Stood ; v/hile hand on heart too, thus 
With solemn action spoke the Lady : — 

" ' Thou 'st done me foulest wrong to-day ! 
Ne'er false was L not e'en in thought, 
Till this poor heart I touch'd but now, 
Within my own mutation wrought. 

** • The youthful Poet's passion, told 
With sadden'd heart and anxious brow, 
I scorn'd while yet the Poet lived, 
But dead ! I yield me to it now. 

" 'To death devoted, this weak frame, 
To which De Coucy's heart hath lent 
A brief support, shall never more 
Partake of earthly nourishment. 

" 'May Heav'n its mercy show to all ; 
Yes, e'en to thee may Heav'n show it !' 

Such is the story of a heart 

That once inspired a youthful Poet." 

The above story of tlie Castellan de Coiicy is considered to be 
one of Uliland's most remarkable poems, as much from its general 
sweetness, unhappily lost in translation, as from the wit with which 
he continually keeps before the reader the one word which forms 
the principal feature in the little romance. The tale is, however, 
by no means new. There are few nations whose story-tellers do 
not celebrate a lady who was forced by a jealous husband to eat 
the heart of her lover. It is common to England, Ireland and 



STEANGE BANQUETS. 427 

Scotland. In France, the stoiy exists nearly as Uland lias told ic. 
In Germany it is to be met with in various forms. In one of 
these, the lady is shown to have been more kind and less faithful 
than the Ritter's wife of Fayal. But above all it is, as the mad 
prince says, " extant and written in very choice Italian," by the at 
once seductive and repulsive Bocaccio. It is one of the least 
filthy of a set of stories, told with a beauty of style, a choice of 
language, a lightness and a grace, which make you forget the 
matter and risk your morals, for the sake of improving your 
Italian. In JBocaccio's narrative, the lady is of course very guilty ; 
and the husband also, of course, murders the lover in as brutal 
and unknightly a fashion as can well be imagined. IsTothing else 
could be expected from that unequalled story-teller, (unequalled 
as much for the charm of his manner, as for the general unclean- 
ness of his details,) who but seldom has a good word to say for 
woman, or an honest testimony to give of man. Human nature 
presented nothing beautiful or estimable to him ; and yet it is 
undeniable that he had an acute perception of beauty and honour. 
The characters he describes are scurvy, vicious, heartless, 
debauched w^retches ; but he dresses them up with such dashing- 
bravery of attire, and endows them with such divinity of beauty, 
and he writes of their whereabout with such a witchery of pen, 
that his poor, weak, ensnared readers have nothing for it but to 
go on in alternate extremes of admiring and condemning. To 
revert to the German prose story of the Heart, I may say that it 
is merely a bad translation from the " Decameron," telling in a 
very matter-of-fact way the history of a Lady von Roussillon, 
" welche ihres Geliebten Herz zu essen erhalt, und sich den Tod 
gibt." 

This strange banquet is not to be set dov/n as positively apocry- 
phal, merely because it has fallen into the possession of the 
rhymers and romancers. The old German barons were rather 
inclined to a barbarous species of kitchen — something crude and 
cannibal of character — if we may so far credit the extravagances 
of legend as to believe they are founded on fact. But we need 



428 TAELE TKAITS. 

not go to Germany and fairy periods for illustrations of extraordi- 
nary banquets, or individual dieting. 

Among eccentric gastronomists, I do not recollect one more 
remarkable than Mrs. Jeffreys, the sister of Wilkes. At Batb sbe 
slept througliout the year beneath an open window, and the snow 
sometimes lent her bed an additional counterpane. She never 
allowed a fire to be kindled in this room, the chief adornment of 
which was a dozen clocks, no two of which struck the hour at the 
same moment. She breakfasted frugally enough on chocolate and 
dry toast, but proceeded daily in a sedan chair, with a bottle of 
Madeira at her side, to a boarding-house to dine. She invariably 
sat between two gentlemen, " men having more sinew in mind and 
body than w^omen," and with these she shared her " London Par- 
ticular." Warner, in his " Literary Recollections," says that some 
mighty joint that ^v^s especially well-covered with fat, was always 
prepared for her. She was served with slices of this fat, which 
she swallowed alternately with pieces of chalk, procured for her 
especial enjoyment. J^Teutralizing the subacid of the fat with the 
alkaline principle of the chalk, she " amalgamated, diluted, and 
assimilated the delicious compound with half-a-dozen glasses of 
her delicious wine." The diet agreed well with the old lady, and 
she maintained that such a test authorized use. 

We may contrast with the lady who loved lumps of chalk, the 
people of a less civilized time and place, who had a weakness for 
a species of animal food, which is not to be found written down in 
the menus of modern dinners. Keating, in his " J^arrative of an 
Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River," gives some curious 
details, which may be not inappropriately touched upon here, 
referring, as they do to a nation of dog-eaters. The custom at 
first sight strikes us as rather revolting ; but the animal in ques- 
tion, to say nothing of our stealthy friend, the cat, is eaten every 
day in " ragouts," that smoke on the boards of the cheap gargottes 
of Paris and the hanlieux. After all, custom and prejudice have 
much to do with the subject. "What do you do with your 
dead?" once asked a member of a distant Asiatic tribe of a 



STEANGE BANQUETS. 429 

Roman. " We bury them," answered the latter. " Gracious 
heaven !" exclaimed the " untutored Indian," with disgust, " what 
filthy and fiendish impiety!" "Why so?" inquired the other. 
" What do you and your people with your dead ?" " We 
treat them," replied the Indian proudly, " with the decent forms 
that best become the dead ; we eat them !" To this day the 
nobles of Thibet are honoured after death with a very valuable 
and enviable privilege. They are reverentially offered to a 
body of hounds, maintained for the especial purpose of devouring 
the defunct aristocracy. What remains at the end of the process 
is cared for, like the ashes which were taken of old from beneath 
the pile on which a loved corpse had lain. This exclusive honour 
is never vouchsafed to the commonalty ; it is the particular vested 
right of greatness ; and had Hamlet known of it when he traced 
great Caesar's clay stopping a bung-hole, it would have afforded 
him another illustration of the base uses to which mortality may 
return. Let us return to the dog-eaters. Mr. Keating shall tell what 
he saw amongst them, in his ov/n words : Bua narret Ulysses. 

" As soon as we had taken our seats, the chief (Wanotau) passed 
his pipe round ; and while we were engaged in smoking, two of 
the Indians arose, and uncovered the large kettles which were 
standing over the fire. They emptied their contents into a dozen 
of wooden dishes which were placed all round the lodge. These 
consisted of buffalo meat boiled with tepsin; also the same 
vegetable boiled without the meat, in buffalo grease ; and, finally, the 
much-esteemed dog-meat — all which were dressed without salt. In 
compliance with the established usage of travellers to taste of 
everything, we all partook of the latter, with a mixed feeling of 
curiosity and reluctance. Could w^e have divested ourselves entirely 
of the prejudices of education, we should, doubtless, unhesita- 
tingly have acknowledged this to be one of the best dishes that we 
had ever tasted. It was remarkably fat, — was sweet and palatable. 
It had none of that dry, stringy character which we had expected 
to find in it; and it was entirely destitute of the strong taste 
which we had apprehended it must possess. It was not an 



4:30 TABLE TEAITS. 

■unusual appetite, or the want of meat to compare with it, which 
led us to form this favourable opinion of the dog ; for we had on 
our dish the best meat which our prairies afford. But so strongly 
rooted are the prejudices of education, that though we all unaffect- 
edly admitted the excellence of this food, yet few of us could be 
induced to eat much of it. We were warned by our trading 
friends, that the bones of this animal are treated with great 
respect by the doctors. We therefore took great care to replace 
them in the dishes ; and we are informed that after such a feast is 
concluded, the bones are carefully collected, the flesh scraped off 
them, and that after being washed, they are burned on the 
ground ; partly, as it is said, to testify to the dog-species that in 
feasting on one of their number, no disrespect was meant to the 
species itself; and partly also from a behef that the bones of the 
animal will arise and reproduce another. The meat of this 
animal, as we saw it, was thought to resemble that of the finest 
Welsh mutton, except that it was of a much darker colour. 
Having so far overcome our repugnance as to taste it, we no 
longer wonder that the dog should be considered a dainty dish by 
those in whom education has not created a prejudice against this 
flesh. In China it is said that fatted pups are frequently sold in 
the market-place ; and it appears that an invitation to a feast of 
dog meat is the greatest distinction that can be ofl"ered to a 
stranger by any of the Indian naUons east of the Rocky Mountains. 
That this is not the case among some of the nations on the east of 
those mountains, appears from the fact that Lewis and Clarke were 
called in derision by the Indians of Columbia, ' dog-eaters.' " 

It may be readily believed that the food above spot en of must 
be more acceptable to the human appetite than the snails which 
are fattened for the public markets in the meadows about Ulm. 
Two Edinburgh doctors did indeed pronounce the prejudice 
against snails to be absurd, and they showed the strength of their 
own convictions by sitting down to a charmingly prepared little dish 
of the particular dainty. The courage of each failed him at the first 
taste, but neither liked to confess as much to the other. They 



5TEANGE BANQUETS. 431 

went on playing witli their repast, until one ventured to say in a 
remarkably faint voice, " Don't you think, doctor, they are a leetle 
green V " D — d green, Sir ! d — d green !" was the hearty confirm- 
atory rejoinder ; " they are d — d green 1 take them away !" 

But the Australians do not always exhibit this extreme nicety. 
If they cannot, or once could not, eat biscuits, they have no such 
delicate scruples about eating babies, even when those babies are 
their own. The cannibalism of the Australians appears to be not 
so obsolete as those who wish well to humanity would fain desire. 
This is settled by the testimony of Mr. Westgarth, a member of 
the local parliament, and the latest writer who has touched upon 
the subject. In his "Victoria, late Australia Felix," he says: — 
" In their natural state, the aborigines stand out with a species of 
rude dignity. The precision and acuteness of their observant 
faculties are not to be surpassed ; and they exhibit a surprising 
tact in their various modes of discovering and securing food. 
The narrow compass of their minds is concentrated in a few lines 
of vocation, in which, as in the exhibitions of a Blind Asylum, 
there are displayed an extraordinary accuracy and skill. But to 
these barbaric excellences, must be added the most degrading, 
superstitious, and revolting customs. Civilized nations are still 
unwilling to believe that infanticide and cannibalism are associated 
with the customs of any race of human beings, or voluntarily 
practised, except in those rare cases of necessity which have broken 
down the barriers of nature alike to the white and the black; 
but nothing is better affirmed than that cannibalism is a constant 
habit with this degraded race, who alternately revel in the kidney 
fat of their slain or captured enemies, and in the entire bodies of 
their own friends and relatives. ISTor can the infant claim any 
security from the mother who bore it, against some ruthless law, 
or practice, or superstition, that on frequent occasions consigns 
the female proportion, and sometimes both sexes, to destruction. 
On authentic testimony, bodies have been greedily devoured even 
in a state of obvious and loathsome disease : and a mother has 



432 TABLE TKAITS. 

been observed deliberately destroying her youngest child, serving 
it up as food, and gathering around her the remainder of the 
family to enjoy the unnatural banquet." It is certainly pleasant 
to turn from such a spectacle as this to contemplate the wives of 
the King of Delhi, who pass their time in spoiling, but not killing, 
their children, and whose chief amusement, after matters of dress, 
consists in sitting and cracking nutmegs in presence of the Great 
Mogul ! 

But there are worse things than these which necessity can 
render acceptable to the palate. In Australia especially does 
nature appear to indulge in strange freaks. Many of our salt- 
water fish there live in fresh-water rivers ; and, indeed, more than 
one inland river is brackish if not salt. Yet of salt itself the 
natives had never tasted, until the arrival among them of Euro- 
peans ; they do not take kindly to the condiment even to this day. 
They prefer their own unadorned cookery ; and they would espe- 
cially have admired the late Dr. Howard, who published quarterly 
his denunciations against the use of salt. In Australia, the pears 
are made of wood, and the stones of the cherries grow on the 
outside, and not within. The aborigines are satisfied with veYy 
unsavoury diet. They have one fashion, however, in common with 
the self-appointed leaders of civilization, the French ; they eat 
frogs. In France it is the pastime of the bourgeois, on a summer 
evening, to resort to some pool with a rod and line, and a piece 
of red rag or bit of soap for bait, and there catch the little people 
who could not agree about their king by the dozen. In Australia 
the native ladies, in their usual scantiness of costume, proceed to 
the swamps ; and there plunging their long arms up to the shoul- 
ders into the mud, they draw up the astonished frogs by handfuls. 
When caught they are cooked over a slow fire of wood-ashes ; the 
hinder parts only are eaten, as in France ; and there are worse 
dishes than the fricassee of the edible frog. Indeed, if the 
Australians devoured nothing more objectionable, their system of 
diet would almost defy reproof. But, alas ! I find upon their bills 



STBANGE BANQUETS. 433 

of fare — grubs, raw and roasted, snakes, lizards, rats, mice and 
weazels. The mussel is deeply declined by some of the tribes, in 
consequence of an opinion prevailing that the fisli in question is 
the especial property of sorcerers, whose amiable propensity it is 
to destroy mankind by means of mussels. If all the w^orld 
held the same opinion, I have no doubt of great profit therefrom 
resulting. 

One of our earlier captains who visited Australia observing a 
native devouring some indescribable sort of food, oftered him, in 
exchange for a portion of it, a sound sea-biscuit. The exchange 
was effected, and then it became a point of courtesy and honour 
that each should eat what he had acquired by the barter. The 
trial was a severe one for both parties. The Englishman swal- 
lov/ed slowly, and with a sickening sense of disgust that cannot 
be told, the odious food of the aboriginal; while the native, nib- 
bling at the biscuit, appeared to grow more horror-stricken at each 
bit when he tried to sw^allow. The tears came into his eyes, he 
grew sick, faint, enraged ; and at length, dashing the biscuit on 
the ground, he as violently seated himself upon it wdth a bounce 
that ought to have driven it to the very centre of the earth. The 
Englishman in the meantime, had flung away the remnant of his 
^^ piece de resistances^'' and they remained gazing at each other, with 
the inw^ard conviction that, as regarded food, each had tasted 
that day that which deserved to be designated as surprisingly 
beastly. 

Keating's Indians are not the only men of North America who 
have a delicate fancy for the dog : the Dacotas are also that way 
given. Their celebrated " dog-dance " is indeed a festival but of 
rare occurrence, but it is held to show that that highly respectable 
people w^ould eat the hearts of their enemies with as little 
reluctance as the heart of a dog. And this is the manner of the 
feast of " braves ;" they cook the heart and liver of a dog, cool 
them in water, and then hang the dainties on a high pole, around 
which they assemble as grave and silent as quakers. The spirit 
19 



434 TABLE TEAITS. 

is literally supposed to move tlieiii, and when one is thus influ- 
enced, he begins to bark, and jumps towards the pole. Another 
follows his example. The jumping backwards and forwards, and 
the chorus of barking become gradually universal ; and the solemn 
concert is then at its height. Every one does his best, according 
as nature has gifted him. The children snap like French poodles ; 
the girls yelp like pugs ; some snarl, others growl ; the women 
" give tongue " as musically as the Bramham Park hounds ; and 
the fathers of the tribe run through a scale of sounds that would 
highly astonish Lablache. 

And thus, in the midst of it all, one becomes bolder than the 
rest, looks about him grinningly defiant, and making a run and a 
leap at the canine dainties suspended from the pole, he generally 
touches ground again with a piece thereof in his teeth ! This 
good example is also followed universally, until the tempting prize 
is all consumed, and then there is "a general dance of characters," 
and the drama is done. The Dacotas have an esteem for diminu- 
tive dogs; and, lest my readers should deem the tribe to be wholly 
unacquainted with civilization and its secrets, I will just mention 
that these Indians not only drink whisky with as much profusion 
as it is drunken in godly Glasgow, but they occasionally administer 
a little of it to their dogs, in order to stunt their growth. Such 
prayers too as they have, are also marked by a modern and civi- 
lized character ; for example, they say, " Great Spirit ! Father ! 
help us to kill our enemies, and give us plenty of corn !" This is 
the very spirit of much of the prayer put up by the dwellers in 
the regions of enlightenment. And the spirit, with its proper 
motives, is not one to be blamed. These barbarous Indians do 
not, at all events, insult their Great Spirit, by asking him to give 
peace in their time, because none other fighteth for them but him. 
This would sound to their ear as though they needed peace, for 
the reason that their defence in war was not to be relied upon ; 
and, if it had slipped into their formulary, they would at least 
amend it without delay. 



STKANGE BANQUETS-. 435 

But tliis is getting critical, and so to become reminds us of 
authors. Now to treat of them^ in reference to the table, is 
generally speaking to fall upon the discussion of their " calami- 
ties" and the Encyclo238edia of famished writers would be a very 
heavy work indeed. We have yet time, however, before the 
chapter of " Supper " opens, to take a cursory glance at a few of 
the brotherhood of the brain and quill. It can be but of a few, 
and of that few but briefly. " Tanto meglio /" says the reader, 
and I will not dispute the propriety of the exclamation. 



436 TABLE TEAITS. 



AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS. 

It is all very well for Mr. Leigh Hunt to write a poem on tlie 
" Feast of the Poets," and to show us how Apollo stood " pitching 
his darts," by way of invitation to the ethereal banquet. This is 
all very well in graceful poetry, but the account is no more to be 
received, than the new gospel according to ditto is likely to be by 
the Lord Primate and orthodox Christians. It is far more diffi- 
cult to tell the matter in plain prose ; for, where there are few din- 
ners, many authors cannot well dine. It is easier to tell how they 
fasted than how they fed ; how they died, choked at last by the 
newly-baked roll that came too late to be swallowed, than how they 
lived daily, — for the daily life of some would be as impossible of 
discovery, as the door of the " Cathedral of Immensities," wherein 
Mr. Carlyle transacts worship. The soul of the poet, says an 
Eastern proverb, passes into the grasshopper, which sings till it 
dies of starvation. An apt illustration, but our English grasshop- 
pers must not be used for the illustrative purpose, seeing that they 
are far too wise to do anything of the sort. A British grasshopper 
no more sings till he dies, than a British swan dies singing : these 
foolish habits are left to foreigners and poetry. Let us turn to 
the more reliable register of our ever-juvenile .friend, Mr. Sylvanus 
Urban. 

More than a century ago, Mr. Urban, who is the only original 
"oldest inhabitant," gave a "Literary Bill of Mortality for 1752," 
. showing the casualties among books as well as among authors. 
Touching the respective fates of the former, we find the produc- 
tions of the year set down as, "Abortive, VOOO ; still-born, 3000 ; 
old age, 0." Sudden deaths fell upon 320. Three or four thou- 
sand perished by trunk-makers, sky-rockets, pastry-cooks, or worms ; 
while more than half that number were privily disposed of If 
such were the fortunes of the works, how desperate must have been 
the diet of the authors ! So also was their destiny. As a class, 



AUTHOES AND THEIE DIETETICS. 437 

tliey are fixed, in round numbers, at 3000 ; and a third of these 
are registered as dying of lunacy. Some 1200 are entered, as 
" starved." Seventeen were disposed of by " the hangman," and 
fifteen by hardly more respectable persons, namely themselvesJ 
Mad dogs, vipers, and mortification, swept off a goodly number. 
Five pastoral poets, who could not live by the oaten pipe, appro- 
priately died of "fistula." And, as a contrast to the multitude 
" starved," we find a zero indicating the ascertained quantity of 
authors who had perished by the aldermanic malady of " surfeit." 

There is, perhaps, more approximation to truth than appears at 
first sight in this jeu d'esprit. It was only in Pagan days that 
authors could boast of obesity. They dined with the tyranni, as 
Persian poets get their mouths stuffed with sugar-candy by the 
Shah Inshah. And yet Pliny speaks of poets feeding sparingly, 
ut Solent poet(B. Perhaps this was only an exception, like that of 
Moore^ who smilingly sat down to a broil at home when not dining 
with " right honourables ;" or contentedly thanked Heaven for 
" salt fish and biscuits " with his mother and sister in Abbey Street, 
the day after he had supped with the ducal viceroy of Ireland, and 
half the peerage of the three kingdoms. 

Still, in the old times, authors took more liberty with their 
hosts. In Rome they kept more to the proprieties ; for a nod of 
the head of the imperial entertainer was sufiicient to make their 
own fly from their shoulders. In presence of the Roman emperor 
of old, an author could only have declared that the famous inva- 
sion of Britain, which was productive of ship-loads of spoil, in the 
shape of sea-shells, was a god-like feat. So, at the table of the 
czar, all the lyres of Muscovy sing the ode of eternal sameness, to 
the eftect that the dastardly butchery of Sinope was an act that 
made the angels of God jubilant ! The Russian lyres dare not 
sing to any other tune. It v^^as not so of yore. Witness what is 
told us of Philoxenus, the ode writer, whose odes, however, are 
less known than his acts. He was the author of the wish that he 
had a crane's neck, in order to have prolonged enjoyment in swal- 
lov>'ing. This is a poor wish compared with that of Quin, else- 



438 TABLE TKArrs. 

wliere recorded, that lie might have a swallow as long as from 
here to Botany Bay, and palate all the way ! He was a greedy 
fellow, this same Philoxeniis. He accustomed himself to hold his 
hands in the hottest water, and to gargle his throat with it scalding; 
and, by this noble training, he achieved the noble end of being 
able to swallow the hottest things at table, before the other guests 
could venture on them. He would have conquered the most 
accomplished of our country bumpkins in consuming hasty-pud- 
ding at a fair. His mouth was as though it was paved, and his 
fellow-guests used to say of him, that he was an oven and not a 
man. He once travelled many miles to buy fish at Ephesus ; but, 
when he reached the market-place, he found it all bespoke for a 
wedding banquet. He was by no means embarrassed ; he went 
uninvited to the feast, kissed the bride, sang an epithalamium that 
made the guests roar with ecstacy, and afforded such delight by 
his humour, that the bridegroom invited him to breakfast" with him 
on the morrow. His wit had made amends for his devouring all 
the best dishes. It is a long way from Philoxenus to Dr. Chalmers 
forgetting his repast in the outpouring of his wisdom, and enter- 
ing in his journal the expression of his fear that he had been 
intolerant in argument. What a contrast, too, between Philoxenus 
and Byron, who, when dining with a half-score of wits at Rogers's, 
only opened his mouth to ask for biscuits and soda-water, and not 
finding any such articles in the bill of fare, silently dining on vege- 
tables and vinegar ! The noble poet's fare in Athens was often of 
the same modest character ; but w^e know what excesses he could 
commit when his wayward appetite that way prompted, or when 
he wished to lash his Pegasus into fury, as, after reading the famous 
attack on his poetry in the Edinburgh Review, when he swallowed 
three bottles of "claret, and then addressed himself to the toma- 
hawking of his reviewers and rivals, 

Philoxenus, however, had his counterpart in those abbes and 
poets who used, in the hearing of Louis XV., to praise Madame 
de Pompadour. He was writing a poem called " Galatea," in 
honour of the mistress of Dionysius of Sicily, when he was once 



ATITHOES AND THEIR DIETETICS. 439 

dining with that tyrant. There were a couple of barbels on the 
royal board, a small one near the poet, and a larger near the 
prince. As the latter saw Philoxenus put his diminutive barbel to 
his ear, he asked him wherefore, and the poet replied that he was 
asking news of Nereus, but that he thought the fish he held had 
been caught too young to give him any. "I think," said Philoxenus, 
" that the old fish near your sacredness would better suit my pur- 
pose.'' This joke has descended to Joe Miller, in whose collection 
it is to be found in a modified form. But the story is altogether 
less neat than the one told of D.ominic, the famous Italian harle- 
quin and farce writer. He was standing in presence of Louis XIV. 
at dinner, when the Grand Monarque observed that his eyes were 
fixed on a dish of partridges. " Take that dish to Dominic," said 
the king. "What!" exclaimed the farceur^ "partridges and all!" 
" Well," said the monarch, smiling with gravity, " yes, partridges 
and all !" This reminds me of another anecdote, the hero 
of which is the Abbe Morallet, whom Miss Edgeworth in her 
" Ormond " praises so highly, and praises so justly. But Morallet, 
if he loved good deeds, loved not less good dinners, and he shono 
in both. His talents as a writer, and his virtues as a man, to say 
nothing of his appetite, made him especially welcome at the hos- 
pitable table of Monsieur Ansu. The abbe had learned to carve 
expressly that he might appropriate to himself his favourite por- 
tions, — a singular instance of selfishness in a man who was selfish 
in nothing else. It was on one of these occasions that a magnifi- 
cent pheasant excited the admiration of the guests, and of the 
abbe in particular, who nevertheless sighed to think that it had 
not been pl::ced close to him. Some dexterity was required so to 
carve it, that each of the guests might partake of the oriental 
bird; and the mistress of the house, remembering the abbe's skill 
as a carver, directed an attendant to pass the pheasant to M. I'Abbe 
de Morallet. " What !" exclaimed the latter, " the whole of it ? 
how very kind 1" " The whole of it ?" repeated the lady ; "I liave 
no objection, if these ladies and gentlemen are willing to surrender 
their rights to you." The entire company gave cod sent, by reit- 



4:4:0 TABLE TRAITS. 

erating the words, " the whole of it !" and the man, who might 
have gained the Monthyon prize for virtue, really achieved a piece 
of gluttony which hardly confers honour on a hungry clown at a 
fair. 

La Fontaine at table was seen in a better light than the Abbe 
Morallet. A fermier-general once invited him to a dinner of 
ceremony, in the persuasion that an author who excited such 
general admiration would create endless delight for the select com- 
pany, to entertain whom he had been invited. La Fontaine knew 
it well, during the whole repast ate in silence, and immediately 
rose, to the consternation of the convives, to take his departure. 
He was going, he said, to the Academy. The master of the house 
represented to him that it was by far too early, and that he would 
find none of the members assembled. "I know that," said the 
fabulist, with his quiet smile and courteous bow ; " I know that, 
but I will go a long way round." If this seemed a trifle uncour- 
teous — and it was so more in seeming than reality — it was not so 
much so as in the case of Byron, who used to invite a company 
to dinner, and then leave them to themselves to enjoy their repast. 
Noble hosts of the past century used to do something like this 
when they gave masquerades. Fashion compelled them to adopt 
a species of amusement which they detested ; but they vindicated 
personal liberty nevertheless, for when their rooms were at their 
fullest, the noble host, quietly leaving his guests to the care of his 
wife, would slip away to some neighbouring coffee-house, and over 
' a cool pint of claret enjoy the calm which was not to be had at 
home. The late Duke of JSTorfolk used habitually to dine at one 
of the houses in Covent Garden, out of pure liking to it. He 
was accustomed to order dinner for five, and to duly eat what he 
had deliberately ordered ; but, as he one day detected a waiter 
watching him in his gastronomic process, he angrily ordered his 
bill, and never entered the house again. 

It was a common practice with Haydn, like his Grace of 
I^orfolk, to order a dinner for five or six, and then eat the whole 
himself. He once ordered such a dinner to be ready by a stated 



AUTEOES AKD THEIE DIETETICS. Ml 

hour, at wMcli time lie alone appeared, and ordered tlie repast 
to be served. " But Y\^here is the company ?" respectfully inquired 
the head waiter. " Oh !" exclaimed Haydn, / am de gompany !" 
But if he ate all, he also paid for all. Moore and Bowles, in their 
visits together to Bath, used sometimes to dine at the White Hart, 
where, as Moore records, he paid his share of the dinner and pint 
of Madeira, and then Bowles magnificently "stood" a bottle of 
claret, at dessert. And a pleasant dinner the two opposite, yet 
able, poets, made of it — far more pleasant than Coleridge's dinner 
with a party at Reynold's, when he bowled down the glasses like 
nine-pins, because they were too small to drink from copiously ! 

The name of Coleridge's reminds me of Dufresny, an author 
of the time of Louis XVI., who was full of sentiment and 
majestic sounds, but who was content to live at the cost of other 
people, and who never achieved anything like an independence 
for himself. After the death of his royal patron, he was one day 
dining with the Regent Duke of Orleans, who expressed a wish 
to provide for him. Caprice inspired the author to say, " Your 
royal highness had better leave me poor, as I am, as a monument 
of the condition of France before the regency." He was not dis- 
pleased at having his petition refused. A guest at his side did 
indeed remark, by way of encouragement, that " poverty was no 
. vice." " No," answered Dufresny, sharply, " but it is something 
very much worse." In act and spirit he was not unlike a prince 
of wits and punsters among ourselves, who used to set up bottles 
of champagne on his little lawn and bowl them down for nine 
pins ; and who, of course, left his wife and children pensioners on 
the charity of the state and the people. 

I have spoken of La Fontaine ; he was as absent at table as 
poor Lord Dudley and Ward, whose first aberrations so alarmed 
Queen Adelaide. La Fontaine was also like Dean Ogle, who, at a 
friend's table, ahvays thought himself at his own, and if the dinner 
were indifferent, he would make an apology to the guests, and 
promise them better treatment next time. So La Fontaine was 
one day at the table of Despreaux ; the conversation turned upon 
19* 



442 TABLE TEAITS. 

St. Aiigustin, and after mucli serious discourse apon tliat Christian 
teacher, La Fontaine, who had till then been perfectly silent, 
turned to his neighbour, the Abbe Boileau, one of the most pious 
men of his day, and asked him " if he thought that St. Augustin 
had as much wit as Rabelais ?" The priest blushed scarlet, and 
then contented himself with remarking, " M. de la Fontaine, you 
have got on one of your stockings the wrong side out " — which 
was the fact. 

The poet's query to the priest was no doubt as startling as that 
put by the son of a renowned reverend joker to the then Lord 
Primate. The anxious parent had informed his somewhat " fast " 
offspring, that as the archbishop was to dine with him that day, it 
would be desirable that the young gentleman should eschew sport- 
ing subjects, and if he spoke at all, speak onl}' on serious subjects. 
Accordingly, at dessert, during a moment of silence, the obedient 
child, looking gravely at his grace, asked him " if he could tell 
him what sort of condition Nebuchadnezzar was in, when he was 
taken up from grass ?" The Lord Primate readily replied that he 
should be able to answer the question by the time he who had 
made it had found out the name of the man wdiom Samson 
ordered to tie the torches to the foxes' tails, before they were sent 
in to destroy the corn of the Philistines ! 

Moore loved to dine with the great ; but there have been many 
authors who could not appreciate the supposed advantages of such 
distinction. Lainez was one of these, and there were but few of 
his countrymen who resembled him. One day the Duke of 
Orleans met him in the park at Fontainebleaa, and did him the 
honour of inviting him to dinner. "It is really quite impossible," 
said Lainez ; " I am engaged to dine at a tavern with half-a-dozen 
jolly companions; and what opinion would your royal highness 
have of me if I were to break my word ?" Lainez was not hke 
Madame de Sevigne, who, after having been asked to dance by 
Louis Xiy., declared in her delight that he was the greatest 
monarch in the world. Bussi, who laughed at her absurd 
enthusiasm, affirms that the fair authoress of the famous "Let- 



AUTHOES AND THELK DIETETICS. 443 

ters " was so excited at the supper after the dance, that it was 
with difficulty she could refrain from shrieking out " Vive le Roi !" 

Had the famous " petit pere Andre " kept down his impulses as 
successfully as Madame de Sevigne did at the supper, where, after 
all, she did 7iot exclaim, " Vive le Roi," it v/ould have been more 
to his credit, and less to our amusement. The good father, like a 
better man, St. Vincent de Paul, was excessively fond of cards, 
but he did not cheat, like the saint, for the sake of winning for 
the poor. He had been playing at piquet^ and in one game had 
won a considerable sum by the lucky intervention of a fourth king. 
He was in such ecstasy at his luck, that he declared at supper he 
would introduce his lucky fourth king into his next day's sermon. 
Bets were laid in consequence of this declaration, and the whole 
company were present when the discourse was preached. The 
promise made at the supper was kept in the sermon, though some- 
what profanely : " My brethren," said the abbe, " there arrived one 
king, two kings, three kings; but what were they? — and where 
should I have been without the fourth king, who saved me, and 
has benefited you? That fourth king was He who lay in the 
manger, and whom the three royal magi came but to worship 1" At 
the dinner which followed, the author of the sermon was more 
eulogised than if he had been as grand as Bourdaloue, as touching 
as Massillon, or as winning as Fenelon. 

There was more wit in a cure of Basse Bretagne, v/ho was the 
author of his diocesan's pastorals, and who happened to hold invi- 
tations to dinners for the consecutive days of the week. He could 
not take advantage of them and perform his duty too, but he hit 
on a method of accomplishing his desire. He gave out at church, 
an intimation to this effect : — " in order to avoid confusion, my 
brethren, I have to announce that to-morrow, Monday, I will 
receive at confession the liars only ; on Tuesday, fhe misers ; on 
Wednesday, the slanderers ; on Thursday, the thieves ; Friday, the 
libertines ; and Saturday, the women of evil life." It need not be 
said that the priest was left during that week to enjoy himself 
without let or hindrance. And it was at such joyous dinners as 



4:4:4: TABLE TEAITS. 

he was in the habit of attending that most of the sermons, with 
startling passages 'in them, like those of Father Andre, were 
devised. Thus, the Cordelier Maiilard, the author of various pious 
works, at a dinner of counsellors, announced his intention of 
preaching against the counsellors' ladies, — that is, against their 
wives, or such of them that wore embroidery. And well he kept 
his word, as the following choice flowers from the bouquet of his 
pulpit oratory will show. " You say," he exclaimed to the ladies 
in question, " that you are clad according to your conditions ; all 
the devils in hell fly away with your conditions, and you too, my 
ladies ! You will say to me, perhaps. Our husbands do not give 
us this gorgeous apparel, we earn it by the labours of our bodies. 
Thirty thousand devils fly away with the labours of your bodies, 
and you too, my ladies !" And, after diatribes like these against 
the ladies in question, the Cordelier would dine with their lords, 
and dine sumptuously too. The dinners of the counsellors of 
those days were not like the Spanish dinner to which an author 
was invited, and which consisted of capon and wine, two excellent 
ingredients, but unfortunately, as at the banquet celebrated by 
Swift, where there was nothing warm but the ice, and nothing 
sweet but the vinegar, so here the capon was cold and the wine 
was hot. Whereupon, the literary guest dips the leg of the capon 
into the flask of wine, and being asked by his host wherefore he 
did so, replied, " I am warming the capon in the wine, and cooling 
the wine with the capon." 

The host was not such a judge of wine, apparently, as the arch- 
bishops of Salzbourg, who used . not indeed to write books, nor 
indeed read them, but who used to entertain those who did, and 
then preach against literary vanity from those double-balcony pul- 
pits which some of my readers may recollect in the cathedral of 
the town whSre Paracelsus was wont to discourse like Solon, and 
to drink like Silenus ; and before whose tomb I have seen votaries, 
imploring his aid against maladies, or thanking him for having 
averted them ! It is said of one of these prince primates that 
when, on the occasion of Ijis death, the municipal officers went to 



ATJTHOES AND THEIE DIETETICS. 445 

place the seals on his property, they foimd the libraiy sealed up 
exactly as it had been done many years before at" the time of the 
decease of his predecessor. Such, however, was not the case with 
the wine-cellars. What the archiepiscopal wine is at Salzbourg, I ' 
do not know, but if it be half as good as that drank by the monks 
of Molk, on the Danube, w^hy the archbishops may stand excused. 
Besides, they only drank it during their leisure hours, — of 
which, as Hayne remarks, archbishops have generally four and 
twenty daily. 

But to return nearer home, and to our own authors : — Dr. 
Arne may be reckoned among these, and it is of him, I think, 
that a pleasant story is told, showing how he wittily procured a 
dinner in an emergency, which certainly did not promise to allow 
such a consummation. The doctor was with a party of composers 
and musicians in a provincial town, where a musical festival was 
being celebrated, and at w^hich they were prominent performers. 
They proceeded to an inn to dine ; they were accommodated with 
a room, but were told that every eatable thing in the house was 
already engaged. All despaired in their hunger, save the " Mus. 
Doc," Avho, cutting off two or three ends of catgut, went out upon 
the stairs, and observing a w^aiter carrying a joint to a company 
in an adjacent room, contrived to drop the bits of catgut on the 
meat, while he addressed two or three questions to the waiter. 
He then returned to his comj^anions, to whom he intimated that 
dinner would soon be ready. They smiled grimly at what they 
thought was a sorry joke, and soon after, some confusion being 
heard in the room to which the joint w^hich he had ornamented 
had been conveyed, he reiterated the assurance that dinner w^as 
coming, and thereupon he left the room. On the stairs he encoun- 
tered the waiter bearing away the joint, with a look of disgust in 
his face. " Whither so fast, friend, with that haunch of mutton f ' 
was the query. " I am taking it back to the kitchen, Sir ; the 
gentlemen cannot touch it. Only look, Sir," said William, with 
his nose in the direction of the bits of catgut ; " it's enough to 
turn one's stomach !" " WilHam," said Arne gravely, " fiddlers 



4:4:6 TABLE TRAITS. 

liave very strong stomaclis ; bring tlie mutton to our room." The 
tiling was done, tbe haunch was eaten, the hungry guests were 
delighted, but William had ever afterwards a contempt for musical 
people ; he classed them v/ith those barbarians whom he had heard 
the company speak of where he waited, who not only ate grubs, 
but declared that they liked them. 

Martial was often as hardly put to it to secure a dinner as any 
of. the authors I have hitherto named. He was fond of a good 
dinner, ut solent poetce ; and he knew nothing better than a hare, 
followed by a dish of thrushes. The thrush appears to have been 
a favourite bird in the estimation of the poets. The latter may 
have loved to hear them sing, but they loved them better in a 
pie. Homer wrote a poem on the thrush ; and Horace has said, 
in a line, as much in its favour as the Chian could have said in his 
long and lost poem, — "nil melius turdo." Martial was, at all 
events, a better fed and better weighted man than the poet Phi- 
letas of Cos, who was so thin that he walked abroad with leaden 
balls to his feet, in order that he might not be carried away by 
the wind. The poet Archestratus, when he was captured by the 
enemy, was put in a pair of scales, and was found of the weight 
of an obolus. Perhaps this was the value of his poetry ! It was 
the value of nearly all that was written by a gastronomic authoress 
in France ; I allude to Madame de Genlis, who boasts in her 
Memoirs, that having been courteously received by a certain Ger- 
man, she returned the courtesy by teaching him how to cook seven 
different dishes after the French fashion. 

The authors of France have exhibited much caprice in their 
gastronomic practice ; often professing in one direction, and acting 
in its opposite. Thus Lamartine was a vegetarian until he entered 
his teens. He remains so in opinion, but he does violence to his 
taste, and eats good dinners for the sake of conforming to the 
rules of society ! This course in an author, who is for the moment 
rigidly Republican when all the world around him is Monarchical, 
is singular enough. Lamartine's vegetarian taste was fostered by 
his mother, who took him when a child to the shambles, and 



ATJTHOES AND THEIR DIETETICS. 447 

disgusted him with the sight of butchers in activity on slaughtering- 
days. He for a long time led about a pet lamb by a ribbon, and 
went into strong fits at a hint from his mother's cook, that it was 
time to turn the said pet into useful purposes, and make tendi'ons 
d'agneau of him. Lamartine would no more have thought of 
eating his lamb, than Emily Korton would have dreamed of 
breakfasting on collops cut from her dear white doe of Rylston. 
The poet still maintains, that it is cruel and sinful to kill one 
animal in order that another may dine ; but, with a sigh for the 
victim, he can eat heartily of what is killed, and even put his fork 
into the breast of lamb without compunction, — but all for con- 
formity ! He knows tljat if he were to confine himself to turnips, 
he should enjoy better health and have a longer tenure of life ; but 
then he thinks of the usages of society, sacrifices himself to custom, 
and gets an indigestion upon truifled turkey. 

Moore, in his early days in London, used to dine somewhere in 
Marylebone with French refugee priests, for something less than a 
shilling. Dr. Johnson dined still cheaper, at the " Pine Apple," in 
I^ew-street, Covent Garden — namely, for eightpence. They who 
drank wine paid fourpence more for the luxury, but the lexico- 
grapher seldom took wine at his own ex|)ense ; and sixpenny- 
worth of meat, one of bread, and a penny for the waiter, suflSced 
to purchase viands and comfort for the author of the " Vanity of 
Human Wishes." Boyce the versifier w^as of quite another kidney ; 
when he lay in bed, not only starving, but stark naked, a com- 
passionate friend gave him half-a-guinea, v/hich he spent in truffles 
and mushrooms, eating the same in bed under the blankets. 
There was something atrociously sublime about Boyce. Famine 
had pretty well done for him, when some one sent him a slice of 
roast-beef, but Boyce refused to eat it, because there was no 
catchup to render it palatable. 

It must have been a sight of gastronomic pleasure to have seen 
Wilkes and Johnson together over a fillet of veal, with abundance 
of butter, gravy, stufiing, and a squeeze of lemon. The philosopher 
and the patriot were then on a level with other hungry and 



448 TABLE TEAITS. 

appreciating men. Shallow with his short4egged hen, and Sir 
Eoger de Coverley over hasty-pudding, are myths ; not so Pope 
with stey/ed regicide lampreys, Charles Lamb before roast pig, or 
Lord Eldon next to liver and bacon, or Theodore Hook bending to 
vulgar pea-soup. These were rich realities, and the principal 
performers in them had not the slightest idea of affecting refine- 
ment upon such subjects. Goldsmith, when he could get it, had 
a weakness for haunch of venison ; and Dr. Young was so struck 
with a broiled bladebone on which Pope regaled him, that he 
concluded it was a foreign dish, and anxiously inquired how it was 
prepared. Ben Jonson takes his place among the lovers of 
mutton, while Herrick wandering dinneriess about Westminster, 
Nahum Tate enduring sanctuary and starvation in the Mint, 
Savage wantonly incurring hunger, and Otway strangled by it, 
introduce us to autho'rs with whom "dining with Duke Hum- 
phrey," was so frequent a process, that each shadowy meal was 
but as a station towards death. 

When Goldsmith " tramped " it in Italy, his flute ceased to be 
his bread-winner as it had been in France ; the fellow-countrymen 
of Palestrina were deaf to "Barbara Allen," pierced from memory 
through the vents of an Irish reed. Goldsmi.th, therefore, dropped 
his flute, and took up philosophy ; not as a dignity ; he played it 
as he had done his flute, for bread and a pillow. He knocked at 
the gate of a college instead of at the door of a cottage, made his 
bow, gave out a thesis, supported it in a Latin which must have 
set on edge the teeth of his hearers, and, having carried his 
exhibition to a successful end, was awarded the trifling and 
customary honorarium, with which he purchased bread and 
strength for the morrow. No saint in the howling wilderness 
lived a harder life than Goldsmith during his struggling years in 
London ; the table traits, even of his days of triumph, were some- 
times coloured' unpleasingly. I am not sure if Goldsmith was 
present at the supper at Sir Joshua's, when Miss Reynolds, after 
the repast, was called upon as usual to give a toast, and not 
readily remembering one, was asked to give the ugliest man of 



AUTHOES AND THEIR DIETETICS. 449 

her acquaintance, and thereon she gave "Dr. Goldsmith;" the 
name was no sooner uttered than Mrs. Cholmondeley rushed 
across the room, and shook hands with Reynolds by way of 
ai^proval. What a sample of the manners of the day, and how 
characteristic the remark of Johnson, who was present, and whose 
wit, at his friend's expense, was rewarded by a roar, that " thus the 
ancients, on. the commencement of their friendships, used to sacri- 
fice a beast between them !" Cuzzoni, when found famishing", 
spent the guinea given her in charity, in a bottle of tokay and a 
penny roll. So Goldsmith, according to Mrs. Thrale, was " drinking 
himself drunk with Madeira," with the guinea sent to rescue him 
from hunger by Johnson. But let us be just to poor Oliver. If 
he squandered the eleemosynary guinea of a friend, he refused 
roast beef and daily pay, offered him by Parson Scott, Lord 
Sandwich's chaplain, if he would write against his conscience, and 
in support of government ; and he could be generous in his turn 
to friends who needed the exercise of generosity. When Gold- 
smith went into the suburban gardens of London to enjoy his 
"shoemakers' holiday," he generally had Peter Barlow with him. 
jS'ov/ Peter's utmost limit of profligacy was the sum of fifteen- 
pence for his dinner ; his share would sometimes amount to five 
shillings, but Goldsmith always magnificently paid the difference. 
Perhaps there are few of the sons of song who dined so beggarly, 
and achieved such richness of fame, as Butler, Otway, Goldsmith, 
Chatterton, and, in a less degree of reputation, but not of suffering", 
poor Gerald Grifiin, who wrestled with starvation till he began to 
despair. Chatterton did despair, as he sat without food, hope, and 
humility ; and we know what came of it. Butler, the sturdy son 
of a Worcestershire farmer, after he had astonished his con- 
temporaries by his "Hudibras," lived known but to a few, and 
upon the charity or at the tables of them. But he did not, like 
the heartless though sorely-tried Savage, slander the good-natured 
friends at whose tables he drew the support of his life. As for 
Otway, whether he perished of suffocation by the roll which he 
devoured top greedily after long fasting, or whether he died of the 



450 TABLE TRAITS. 

cold draught of water, drank when lie was overheated, it is certain 
that he died in extreme penury at the " Bull " on Tower Hill, — • 
the coarse frequenters of the low public-house were in nois}?" 
revelry round their tables, while the body of the dead poet lay, 
awaiting the grave, in the room adjacent. 

The table life of Peter Pindar was a far more joyous one than 
that of much greater poets. At Truro he was noted for his frugal 
fare, and he never departed from the observance of frugality of 
living throughout his career. He would sometimes, we are told, 
when visiting country patients, and when he happened to be 
detained, go into the kitchen and cook his own beefsteak, in 
order to show a country cook how a steak was done in London, — 
the only place, he said, where it was properly cooked. Ho 
laughed at the faculty as he did at the king, and set the whole 
profession mad by sanctioning the plentiful use of water, declaring 
that physic was an uncertain thing, and maintaining that in most 
cases all that was required on the doctor's part was " to watch 
nature, and when she was going right, to give her a shove behind." 
He was accustomed to analyse the drugs which he had prescribed 
for his patients, before he would allow the latter to swallow them, 
and he gave a decided county bias against pork by remarking of 
a certain apothecary that he was too fond of bleeding the patients 
wdio resorted to him, and too proud of his large breed of pigs. 
The inference was certainly not in favour of pork. Peter's practi- 
cal jokes in connexion with the table were no jokes to the chief 
object of them. Thus, when a pompous Cornish member of par- 
liament issued invitations for as pompous a dinner to personages 
of corresponding pomposity, " Peter," recollecting that the senator 
had an aunt who w^as a laundress, sent her an invitation in her 
nephew's name, and the old lady, happy and proud, excited uni- 
versal surprise, and very particular horror in the bosom of the 
parliament-man, by making her appearance in the august and 
hungry assembly, who welcomed her about as warmly as if she 
had been a " boule asphyxiante " of the new French artillery 
practice. 



AUTHOES AND THEIR DIETETICS. 451 

It is goicg a long way back to ascend from "Pindar" to Tasso, 
but both, poets loved roasted chestnuts, — and there is the affinity. 
Peter never drank any thing but old rum ; a wine glass, (never 
beyond a wine glass and a half,) served him for a day, after a 
dinner of the plainest kind. The doctor eschewed wine alto- 
gether, at least in his latter days, as generating acidity. Tasso, 
however, unlike our satirical friend, was a wine-bibber. During 
the imprisonment which had been the result of his own arrogance, 
he wrote to the physician of the Duke of Ferrara, complaining of 
intestinal pains, of sounds of bells in his ears, of painful mental 
images and varying apparitions of inanimate things appearing to 
him, and of his inability to study. The doctor advised him to 
apply a cautery to his leg, abstain from wine, and confine himself 
to a diet of broth and gruels. The poet defended the sacredness 
of his appetite, and declined to abstain from generous wine ; but 
he urged the medico to find a remedy for hisf ills, promising to 
recompense him for his trouble, by making him immortal in song. 
At a later period of his life, when he was the guest of his friend 
Manco, in his gloomy castle of Bisaccio, the illustrious pair were 
seated together, after dinner, over a 'dessert of Tasso's favourite 
chestnuts and some generous wine ; and there he aifrighted his 
friend by maintaining that he was constantly attended by a 
guardian spirit, who was frequently conversing with him, and in 
proof of the same, he invited Manco to listen to their dialogue. 
The host replenished his glass and announced himself ready. 
Tasso fell into a loud rhapsody of mingled folly and beauty, occa- 
sionally pausing to give his spirit an opportunity of speaking ; but 
the remarks of this agathodasmon were inaudible to all but the 
ears of the poet. The imaginary dialogue went on for an hour ; 
and at the end of it, when Tasso asked Manco what he thought 
of it, Manco, who was the most matter-of-fact man that ever 
lived, replied that, for his part, he thought Tasso had drunk too 
much wine and eaten too many chestnuts. And truly I think 
so too. 

The greatest of authors are given to the strangest of freaks. 



462 TABLE TRAITS. 

Thus one of tlie most popular of tlie teachers of the people pre- 
sided at a gay tavern supper the night before the execution of the 
Mannings. The feast concluded, the party (supplied with brandy 
and biscuits) proceeded to the disgusting spectacle, where they 
occupied " reserved seats ;" and when all was done, the didactic 
leader of the revellers and sight seers, thought he compensated 
for his w^ant of taste, by pronouncing as " execrable " the taste of 
those who, like George Selwyn, could find pleasure in an execution. 
But there are few men so inconsistent as didactic authors. Pope 
taught, in poetry, the excellence of moderation ; but he writes to 
Oongreve in 1715, that he sits up till two o'clock over burgundy 
and champagne ; and he adds, " I am become so much of a rake 
that I shall be ashamed, in a short time, to be thought to do any 
sort of business." But Pope's table practice, like Swift's, was not 
always of the same character. The dean, writing to Pope, in the 
same year, that the'^latter tells Congreve (a dissolute man at table, 
by the way) of his sitting over burgundy and champagne till two 
in the morning, speaks of quite another character of life: "You 
are to understand that I live in a corner of a vast unfurnished 
house. My family consists of a steward, a groom, a helper in my 
stable, a footman, and an old maid, who are all at board wages ; 
and when I do not dine abroad, or make an entertainment, — 
which last is very rare, — I eat a mutton pie, and drink half a pint 
of wine." Pope's habit of sleeping after dinner did not incline 
him to obesity ; and it was a habit that the dean approved. Swift 
told Gay that his wine was bad, and that the clergy did not often 
call at his house ; an admission in which Gay detected cause and 
effect. In the following year to that last named. Swift wrote a 
letter to Pope, in which I find a paragraph affording a table trait 
of some interest : " I remember," he says, " when it grieved your 
soul to see me pay a penny more than my club, at an inn, when 
you had maintained me three months at bed and board ; for 
wMoh, if I had dealt with you in the Smithfield way, it would 
have cost me a hundred pounds, for I live worse here (Dublin) 
upon more. Did you ever consider that I am, for life, almost 



AUTHORS AND THEIK DIETETICS. 453 

twice as rich as you, and pay no rent, and drink French wine 
twice as cheap as you do jDort, and have neither coach, chair, nor 
mother ?" Pope illustrates Bolingbroke's way of li^ang as well as 
his own some years later. The reveller till two in the morning, 
of the year 1715, is sobered down to the most temperate of table 
men, in 1*728. "My Lord Bolingbroke's great temperance and 
economy are so signal, that the first is fit for my constitution, and 
the latter would enable you to lay up so much money as to buy 
a bishopric in England. As to the return of his health and 
vigour, were you here, you might inquire of his haymakers. But, 
as to his temperance, I can answer, that, for one whole day, we 
have had nothing for dinner but mutton broth, beans and bacon, 
and a barn-door fowl ;" after all, no bad fare either, for peer or 
poet ! Swift too, at this period, boasts no longer of his " French 
wnnes." His appetite is affected by the appalling fact, that the 
national debt amounts to the unheard-of sum of seven millions 
sterling ! and thareupon he says : " I dine alone on half a dish of 
meat, mix water with my wine, walk ten miles a-day, and read 
Baronius." 

Such was the table and daily life of an author who began to 
despair of his country! In 1732, however, the dean w^as again 
full of hope, — we see it in the condition of his wine matters: 
" My stint in company," he writes to Gay, " is a pint at noon, and 
half as much at night ; hut I often dine at home, like a hermit, 
and then I drink little or none at all." Was it that he despaired 
again, when alone ; or that he only drank copiously at others' 
cost ? Of his own cellar arrangements, however, he thus speaks : 
"My one hundred pounds will buy me six hogsheads of wine, 
which will support me a year, provisce fi'ugis in annum copia^ 
Horace desired no more ; for I will construe frugis to be wine.' 
How a man who drank little or none at home, and seldom saw 
company to help him to consume the remainder, could contrive to 
get through six hogsheads in a year, is a problem that will be 
solved when the philosophers of Laputa have settled their theories.**-- 
Literature is a pleasant thing when its professors ha,ve not to 



454: TABLE TEAITS. 

write in order to live. Such was the case in tlie last century, 
witli poor De Limiers, who was permitted to write in periodicals, 
on the stipulation that he " never told anybody." It is said of 
him that he would have been an exceedingly clever person, if he 
had not always been hungry, but that famine spoiled his powers. 
This was the bookseller's fault, not his. The same might nearly 
be said of poor Gerald Griffin ; but he kept his ability warm even 
amid cold hunger, and had the courage to write his noble tragedy 
" Gisippus " on scraps of paper picked up by him in wretched 
coffee-shops, where he used to take a late breakfast, and cajole 
himself into the idea that it was dinner. 

When Cervantes, with two friends, were travelling from Esqui- 
vias, famous for its illustrious wines, towards Toledo, he was 
overtaken by a " polite student," who added himself and his mule 
to the company of " the crippled sound one " and his friends, and 
who gave honest Miguel much fair advice touching the malady 
which was then swiftly killing him. " This malady is the dropsy," 
said the student with the neck bands that would not keep in their 
place, — " the dropsy, which all the water in the world would not 
cure, even if it were not salt ; you must drink by rule, and eat 
more, and this will cure you better than any medicine." " Many 
have told me so," was the reply of the immortal Miguel, " but 1 
should find it as impossible to leave off drinking, as if I had been 
born for no other purpose. My life is well-nigh ended, and by 
the beatings of my pulse, I think next Sunday, at latest, will see 
the close of my career." The great Spaniard was not very 
incorrect in his prognostic. I introduce this illustrative incident 
for a double reason ; first, it is " germane to the matter " in hand, 
and secondly, it reminds me of a fact with the notice of which I 
will conclude this section of my imperfect narrative: I allude to 

THE LIQUOR-LOVING LAUREATES. 

It is incontrovertible that, with the exception of two or three, 
all our laureates have loved a more pleasant distillation than that 
from bay-leaves. In the early days, the " versificatores regis,'* 



AUTHOKS AND TIIEIS DIETETICS. 455 

were rewarded, as all the minstrels in Teutonic ballads are, witli a 
little money and a full bowl. The nightingales in kings' cages 
piped all the better for their cake being soaked in wine. From 
the time of the first patented laureate, Ben Jonson, the rule has 
borne much the same character, and permanent thirstiness seems 
generally to have been seated under the laurel. Thus, Ben 
himself was given to joviality, jolly company, deep drinking, and 
late hours. His affection for a particular sort of wine acquired 
for him the nick-name of the Canary-bird ; and indeed succeeding 
laureates who, down to Pye, enjoyed the tierce of Canary, partly 
owe it to Ben. 

Charles I. added the wine to an increase of pay asked for by the 
bard ; and the spontaneous generosity of one king became a rule 
for those that followed. The next laureate, Davenant, a vintner's 
son, was far more dissolute in his drinking, for which he did not 
compensate by being more excellent in his poetry. The third of the 
patented laureates, Dryden,if he loved convivial nights, loved to spend 
them as Jonson did, in " noble society." Speaking of the Roman poets 
of the Augustan age, he says: — ^" They imitated the best Avay of liv- 
ing, which was, to pursue an innocent and inoffensive pleasure ; that 
which one of the ancients called ' eruditam voluptatem.' We have, 
like them, our genial nights, where our discourse is neither too serious 
nor too light, but always pleasant, and for the most part instructive; 
the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious on 
the absent ; and the cups only such as will raise the conversation of 
the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow." The 
genial nights, however, were not always so delightfully Elysian 
and sesthetic. When Rochester suspected Dryden of being the 
author of the "Essay on Satire," which was really written by 
Lord Mulgrave, and which was offensive to Rochester, the latter 
took a very unpoetical revenge. As Dryden was returning from 
his erudita voluptas at Wills', and was passing through Rose-street, 
Covent Garden, to his house in Gerrard street, he was waylaid and 
severely beaten, by ruffians who were believed to be in the pay of 
Rochester. The conversation of that night certainly 7nust have 
disturbed the business of the morrow ! 



456 TABLE TEAITS. 

And next we come to hasty Shad well, who may be summarily 
dismissed with the remark that he was addicted to sensual indul- 
gence, and to any company that promised good wine, and plenty 
of it. Poor Nahum Tate, too, is described as " a free and fuddling 
companion;" but the miserable man had gone through more 
fiery trials than genial nights. Of Rowe, the contrary may be 
said. He was the great diner-out of his day ; always vivacious, 
dashing, gay, good-humoured, and habitually generous, whether 
drunk or sober. He was but a poor poet, but he was succeeded by 
one who wrote worse and drank more — Eusden, of whom Gay 
writes to Mason that he " was a person of great hopes in his 
youth, though at last he turned out a drunken parson." Gibber 
loved the bottle quite as intensely as Eusden did, and he was a 
gambler to boot ; but there were some good points about Colley, 
although Pope has so bemauled him. Posterity has used Gibber 
as his eccentric daughter did when he went to her fish-stall to 
remonstrate with her against bringing disgrace upon the family 
by her adoption of such a course : the affectionate Gharlotte caught 
up a stinking sole, and smacked her sire's face with it ; but GoUey 
wiped his cheek, went home, and got drunk to prove that he was a 
gentleman. With heavy Whitehead we first fall in with 
indisputable respectability. He sipped his port, a pensioner at 
Lord Jersey's table, and wrote classical tragedies, for which I 
heartily forgive him, because they are deservedly forgotten. His 
successor, slovenly Warton, exulted over his college wine with the 
gobble of a turkey-cock ; and then came Pye, with his pleasant 
conviviality and his warlike strains, which " roared like a sucking 
dove," and put to sleep the militia, which it was hoped they 
would have aroused. Pye was of the time of " Pindar, Pye, and 
Parvus Pybus ;" and it was during his tenure of oflice that the 
tierce of Ganary was discontinued, and the 27/. substituted. 
With Southey, a dignity was given to the laureateship, which it 
had, perhaps, never before enjoyed ; and the poetic mantle fell on 
worthy shoulders, when it covered those of the gentle Wordsworth, 
^ot that Wordsworth never was drunk. The bard of Rydal 
Mount was once in his life " full of the o-ocl ;" but he was drunk 



AUTHOES AND THEIE DIETETICS. 457 

with strong enthusiasm too, and the occasion excused, if it did 
not sanctify the deed. The story is well told by De Quincey, and 
it runs thus : — 

" For the first time in his life, Wordsworth became inebriated at 
Cambridge. It is but fair to add, that the first time was also the 
last time. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is the 
occasion of this drunkenness, which was the celebration of the 
first visit to the very rooms at Christ College once occupied by 
Milton, — intoxication by way of homage to the most temperate 
of men, and this homage ofi"ered by one who has turned out him- 
self to the full as temperate ! Every man, in the mean time, who 
is not a churl, must grant a privilege and charter of large enthusi- 
asm to such an occasion ; and an older man than Wordsworth, at 
that era not fully nineteen, and a man 'even without a poet's blood 
in his veins, might have leave to forget his sobriety in such cir- 
cumstances. Besides which, after all, I have heard from Words- 
worth's own lips that he was not too far gone to attend chapel 
decorously during the very acme of his elevation !" 

De Quincey has told how pleasant, and cheerful, and conversa- 
tional was the tea-time at Wordsworth's table; and there, no 
doubt, the poet was far more, so to speak, in his element than 
when in the neighborhood of wine, whose aid was not needed by him 
to elevate his conversation. But Wordsworth, gentle as he was, 
had nothing in him of the squire of dames, whom he generally 
treated with as much indifierence as the present laureate, Tennjson, 
was once said to feel for those very poetical little mortals, — 
children. And here I end the record of a few table traits of the 
patented laureates, adding no more of the fourteenth and last, that 
is, the present vice-Apollo to the Queen, than that he has said of 
his own tastes and locality to enjoy them in, in Will Waterproof 's 
Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock, — 

" plump head waiter at ' The Cock,' 
To which I most resort, 
How goes the time ? 'Tis five o'clock. 
Go fetch a pint of port. 
20 



458 TABLE TEATTS. 

" But let it not be such as tliat 
You set before chance-comers, 
But such whose father-grape grew fat 
On Lusitanian summers." 

And now all things must have an end ; and the end of pleasure 
is like the end of life, — weariness, satiety, and regret ; and the end 
of a well-spent day is not of that complexion, for its name should 
be " supper," without which, however, a man had better go to bed, 
than with it and arise in debt. But, as the moral does not apply 
to us, you and I, Reader, if you will venture further with so 
indiflferent a companion, will go hand in hand, before we finally 
separate. 



459 



SUPPER, 

The supper was the only recognised repast in Rome ; if, indeed, 
we may call that supper which sometimes took place at three in 
the afternoon. I was then rather a dinner, after which properly 
educated persons would not, and those who had supped over freely 
could not, eat again on the same day. The early supper hour was 
favoured by those who intended to remain long at table. " Im- 
perat extructos frangere nona toros," says Martial. The more 
fi'ugal, but they must also have been the more hungry, supped, 
like the Queen of Carthage, at sunset; "labente die convivia 
quserit." All other repasts than this had no allotted hour ; each 
person followed inclination or necessity, and there was no difference 
in the jentaculuyn J the prandium, or the merenda, — the breakfast, 
dinner, or collation, — save difference of time. Bread, dried fruits, 
and perhaps honey, were alone eaten at these simple meals; 
whereat too, some, like Marius, drank before supper time, "the 
genial hour for drinking." The hosts were, in earlier ages, cooks 
as well as entertainers. Patroclus was famous for his OUa Podrida, 
and a Roman general received the Samnite ambassadors in a room 
where he was boiling turnips for his supper ! 

Sunset, however, was the ordinary/ supper-time amongst the 
Romans. "De vespere suo yivere," in Plautus, alludes to this. 
In the time of Horace, ten o'clock was not an unusual hour, and 
men of business supped even later. At the period of the decadence 
of the empire, it was the fashion to go to the baths at eight, and 
sup at nine. The repasts which commenced earlier than this 
were called tempestiva^ as lasting a longer time. Those which 
began by daylight — de die- — ^had a dissolute reputation ; " ad ami- 
cam de die potare," is a phrase employed in the Asinaria to illus- 
trate the great depravity of him to whom it is applied. 

There is no doubt, I think, in spite of what critics say, that, how- 
ever it may have b^en with the Romans, the Greeks certainly had 



460 TABLE TRAITS. 

four repasts every day. Tljere was the breakfast (dfCcpKaTiafJia), the 
dinner, (dptorov), the collation {eGnepLGfia), and the chief of all, 
desrpite the term for dinner, the supper (SsTttvov). 

Among the Romans the Ccena adventitia was the name given to 
suppers whereat the return of travellers to their homes was cele- 
brated ; the Coena popularis was simply a public repast, given to 
the people by the government ; the terrestris coena was, as Hegio 
describes it in the Captivei, a supper of herbs, multis oleribus. 
The Greeks called such " a bloodless supper." The parasite, in 
Athenseus, says that when he is going to a house to supper, he 
does not trouble himself to gaze at the architectural beauties of 
the mansion, nor the magnificence of the furniture, but at the 
smoke of the chimney. If it ascends in a thick column, he knows 
there is certainty of good cheer ; but if it is a poor thread of smoke, 
says he, why then I know that there is no blood in the supper 
that is preparing : to delnvov dXV ov6' aliia ex^i. 

These repasts were gay enough when there was good Chian 
wine, unmixed with sea-water, to set the wit going. The banquets 
of Lais were probably the most brilhant ever seen in Greece, for 
there was abundance of sprightly intellect at them. It might be 
said of them, as Sidney Smith says of what used to be in Paris 
under the ancient regime, when " a few women of brilliant talents 
violated all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant 
little suppers." 

It is a well-ascertained fact that when the Greeks gave great 
entertainments, and got tipsy thereat, it was for pious reasons. 
They drank deeply in honour of some god. They not only drank 
deeply, but progressively so; their last cup at parting was the 
largest, and it went by the terrible name of the Cup of Necessity. 
There was a headache of twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it. 
Their pic-nic and conversation suppers were not bad things. 
Every guest brought his own rations in a basket ; but as the rich 
and the selfish used to shame and tantalise the poorer guests by 
their savoury displays, Socrates, that dreadfully didactic personage, 
imperious as Beau Nash in matters of social discipline, insisted that 



SUPPEE. 461 

wliat each guest brought should be common to all. The result 
was less show and more comfort. But I would not have liked to 
have supped where Socrates was in the chair, for, in spite of his 
talents, he was a horrid bore, watching what and how each guest 
ate, and speaking to or at him whenever his acute eye discovered 
a rent in the coat of his good manners. If he sometimes said good 
things, he as frequently said sharp ones ; and where he was pre- 
sident, the guests were simply at school. 

It is indeed seldom that the sages are desirable associates. 
" Come and sup with me next Thursday," said a French Amphitryon 
to a friend. " You shall meet philosophers or literary men ; take 
your choice." " My choice is soon made," was the reply ; " I will 
sup twice with you." It was so arranged, and the supper with 
the literati was incomparably the better banquet of the two. ' 

The supper was the great meal of the Greeks ; but neither at 
this, nor at any other repast, does Homer ever make mention of 
boiled meat. The Greeks, then, were not like our poor Greenwich 
pensioners, who, up to the present time, have never been provided 
Avith meat cooked in any other way. The result is that the men 
themselves look as if they were half-boiled. But a new order of 
things, including ovens and baked joints, has been introduced into 
the kitchen and refectory of the hospital, and the ancient mariners 
will soon show the effects of variety in diet and cooking, by a 
healthier and a happier hue on their solemn and storm-beaten 
cheeks. 

And this matter of boiled meat reminds me of the old Duke of 
Grafton, who never ate anything else at dinner or supper, (for it 
was in the days of double meals,) but boiled mutton. Yet every 
day the cook was solemnly summoned to his grace's side, to listen 
to orders which he knew by heart, and instructions which wearied 
while they vexed his spirits. The duke must have been of the 
saddened constitution which would have entitled him to sup with 
that nervous Duke of Marlborough, who always joined with his 
invitation a request that his guest would say or do nothing to 
make him laugh, as his grace could not bear excitement. 



4:62 TABLE TRAITS. 

At the supper-table tlie Eomans did not decline the flesh of the 
ass, nor that of the dog ; and they were as fond of finely fatted 
snails as the southern Germans are, who have inherited their taste. 
Macrobius, describing the supper given by the epicurean pontiff 
Lentulus, in honour of his reception, says that the first course was 
composed of sea hedgehogs, oysters, and asparagus. After these 
provocatives came a second course, consisting of more oysters, and 
various othef shell-fish, fat pullets, beccaficoes, venison, wild-boar, 
and sea-nettles, — to digest the marine hedgehogs, I suppose. The 
third course assumed a more civilized aspect, and the guests were 
only tempted by fish, fowl, game, and cakes from the Ancona 
marshes. There is a supper of Lentulus, as described by Becker. 
The supper was given to Gallus, and the account of it is so little 
exaggerated as to afford a tolerably correct idea of what those 
banquets were. Nine guests, two of them "gentlemen from 
Perusia," occupied the triclinium. The pictures around repre- 
sented satyrs celebrating the joyous vintage; the death of the 
boar ; fruit and provision pieces over the door, and similar designs, 
calculated to awaken a relish for the banquet, were suspended 
between the elegant branches occupied by living thrushes. The 
lowest place in the middle sofa was the seat for the most honoured 
guest. As soon as all were in a reclining posture, the attendant 
slaves took off tbeir sandals, and water in silver basins was carried 
round by good-looking' youths, and therewith the visitors per- 
formed their brief ablutions. At a nod from the host, two servants 
deposited the tray bearing the dishes of the first course in the 
centre of the table. The chief ornament of this tray, which was 
adorned with tortoiseshell, was a bronze ass, whose panniers were 
filled with olives, and on whose back rode a Silenus, whose pores 
exuded a sauce which fell upon the roast breast of a sow that had 
never fulfilled a mother's duty, below. Sausages on silver gridirons, 
with Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds beneath them to 
simulate fire; and dishes, also of silver, containing various 
vegetables, shell-fish, snails, and a reptile or two, formed the other 
delicacies of this course. While the guests addressed themselves 



SUPPEK. ^^^ 

thereto, they were supplied with a beverage composed of wines 
and honey scientifically commingled. The glory of the first course 
was, ]iowever, the carved figure of the brooding hen, which was 
brought in on a separate small tray. The eggs taken from 
beneath her were off'ered to the guests, who found the apparent 
eggs made of dough, on breaking which with the spoon, a fat 
fig-pecker was seen lying in the pepper-seasoned yolk, and strongly 
tempting the beholder to eat. This delicacy, was, of course, 
readily eaten, and mulsum, the mixture of Hymettian honey and 
Falernian wines, was copiously drunk to aid digestion. A good 
deal of wine was imbibed, and numerous witch stories told (a 
favourite supper pastime), between and during the courses, at 
which the dishes were more and more elaborate and fantastic. A 
vast swine succeeded to a wild boar at the supper of Lentulus, who 
affecting to be enraged at his cook for forgetting to disembowel 
the animal before preparing it for the table, that ofiicial feigns to 
tremble with the energy of his repentance, and forthwith proceeds 
to perform the office of gutting the animal in presence of the 
guests. ' He plunges his knife into its flanks, when there imme- 
diately issues from the gaping wound string after string of little 
sausages. The conclusion of the supper is thus told :— " The eyes 
of the guest were suddenly attracted to the ceiling by a noise 
overhead; the ceiling opened, and a large silver hoop, on which 
were ointment bottles of silver and alabaster, silver garlands with 
beautifully chiselled leaves, and circlets and other trifles, descended 
upon the table ; and after the dessert, prepared by the new baker, 
whom Lentulus purchased for a hundred thousand sesterces, had 
been served up, the party rose, to meet again in the brilliant 
saloon, the intervening moments being spent, by some in sauntermg 
along the colonnades, and by others in taking a bath." 

In the description of the supper given by Siba to celebrate the 
return of Nero to Rome, we find that the slaves, when they took 
off the sandals of the guests, supplied them with others of a 
lighter description, which were fastened by crossed ribands. Those 
who did not come in "dress," were furnished with variegated 



464 TABLE TEAITS. 

woollen vestments to cover their togas. Siba's banquet began to 
the sound of a hydraulic organ, which, however, was only in place 
of our dinner-bell. When the lime-wood tables were duly covered 
and flowered, the guests took their places to the sound of flutes 
and harps, and said a sort of grace^ by invoking Jupiter ; while a 
modest libation of wine was cast on the floor in honour of the 
household gods. The first course consisted of some remarkably 
strange dishes, but the guests reserved their appetite, or provoked 
it with pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar cattle. A 
master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was to regulate 
how often the guests should drink; and the latter invariably 
selected the most confirmed toper. We leave this office to the 
master of the house, and in well-regulated families that high 
official leaves his guests to do according to their good pleasure. 
The garlands having been duly encircled round the brows of 
Siba's friends, the trumpets announced the entrance of the second 
course. The second course was duly discussed, its extraordinary 
dishes thoroughly consumed, and the four cups were drained to 
Nero ; being the number of letters in his name ; and a good deal 
of jollity began to abound, which was checked a little by the 
arrival of a present from the emperor, sent to Siba, and which 
consisted of a silver skeleton. As the guests feared to interpret 
the meaning of the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and then to 
singing, and philosophising ; and then resumed their eating ; and 
when the force of nature could no further go, they called in the 
jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, and having 
drawn as much amusement from these as they possibly could, they 
whipped up their flagging sensations by looking at the feats of 
Spanish dancing girls, and these were succeeded by ten couple of 
gladiators, who slew one another in the apartment for the pastime 
of the supremely indifferent personages who lay half asleep and 
half drunk, and lazily applauded the murderous play. The com- 
pany were in the very midst of this innocent amusement when the 
fire was lit up in Rome by Nero, and which did not spare the 
mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape was not more furious 



suppEE. 465 

and selfish than that which took place at Prince Schwartzenberg's 
ball in Paris, at which the devouring flames had as little respect 
for some of the guests as they had at the terrible supper of Caius 
Siba. 

It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of 
deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records 
of the olden time. But this is not the case. They are fewer ; 
but they do exist. We read in the modern history of Germany, 
that a man with an uncontrollable appetite for bacon once 
presented himself at the tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, 
before Prague, which he was besieging. The man was a boor, 
and had sought access to the king, to ask permission to perform 
before him a feat which he boasted of being able to accomplish, 
— namely, devour a whole hog. General Koenigsmark, who was 
present, and was very superstitious, warned the king not to listen 
to a being who, if not the devil, was probably leagued with him. 
" I'll tell you what it is, and please your Majesty," said the boor, 
" if you will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and 
spurs, I'll eat him before I begin with the hog!" The general 
was no coward ; but he took to his heels, as though the man was 

. serious, and left the king to enjoy what pleasure he might from 
seeing a peasant eat a whole pig. 

In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs for 
supper. When Caille was in that quarter of the world, a Bam- 
bere woman gave him some yams, and what he thought was 
gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On dipping his yams 
therein, however, he saw some little paws, and at once knew that 
it was the famous mouse-sauce ; but he was hungry, and continued 

' his repast. He often subsequently saw the women chopping up 
mice for their suppers. When the animals were caught, they 
were singed over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. A 
hungry man might eat thereof without loathing. We have all 
partaken of far less clean animals. 

It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal is the 
very hour for wit. I do not know how this may be, but Sou- 
20^' 



466 TABLE TEAITS. 

warow's wit appears to have been uncommonly alert at supper- 
time. When he returned from his Italian campaign to St. 
Petersburgh, in 1^799, the Emperor Paul sent Count Kontaissow, 
to compliment him on his arrival. The count had been originally 
a Circassian slave, and 'valet to Paul, who had successively raised 
him to the ranks of equerry, baron, and count. The Circassian 
parvenu found the old warrior at supper. " Excuse me," said 
Souwarow, pausing in his meal, " I cannot recall the origin of 
your illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle procured 
for you your dignity as count." " Well, no," said the ex-valet 
" I have never been in battle." " Ah ! perhaps you have been 
attached to an embassy 2" " No." " To a ministerial office 
then V " That neither." " What important post, then^ have you 
occupied?" — "I have been valet-de-chambre to the emperor." 
" Oh, indeed," said the veteran leader, laying down his spoon, and 
calling aloud for his own valet, Troschka. " Here, you villain," 
said he, as the latter appeared, " I tell you daily to leave off drink- 
ing and thieving, and you never listen to me. Now, look at this 
gentleman here. He was a valet like you ; but being neither sot 
nor thief, he is now grand equerry to his majesty, knight of all 
the Eussian orders, and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow 
his example, and you will have more titles than your master ; who 
requires nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his 
supper !" 

It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was generally 
accounted as the peculiar season of wit ; but wit, often too daring 
at such an hour, sometimes got chastised for its over-boldness. 

At one of the petits soupers of Paris, in this olden time, when 
wit and philosophy had temporarily dethroned religion, a little 
abbe, who had the air of a full-grown Cupid in a semi-clerical 
disguise, or who was like Rose Pomponne in a carnival suit at the 
Courtille, took upon himself to amuse the assembled company 
with stories intended to ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the 
philosophers styled Christianity,) and its professors. He was par- 
ticularly comic on the subject of hell and eternal punishments, 



STJPPEK. 467 

upon wMcli questions lie dilated with a fulness that would have 
scarcely edified either Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole 
of the amiable society exploded in inextinguishable laughter at 
hearing this villainous abbe speak of hell itself as his " feu de 
joie !" There was, however, one face there that bore upon it no 
traces of a smile. It was that of an old marechal-de-camp, who 
might have said, like the old beadle of St. Mary's, Oxford, " I 
have held this office, sir, for more than thirty years, and, thank 
heaven, I am a Christian yet 1" Well, the old marechal frowned 
as, looking at the infidel abbe, he remarked, " I see very plainly, 
sir, by your uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it seems 
to me that you must be a deserter." "My dear marechal," 
answered the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, " it may 
indeed be a little as you say, but then, you see, I do not hold in 
my troop the rank which you enjoy in yours. I am not a mare- 
chal-de-camp !" " Parbleu," rejoined the old soldier, " you never 
could have reached such a rank, for, to judge by your conduct 
and sentiment, you would have been hanged long before your 
chance came for promotion." 

At the soupers of Paris, however, there were few men who 
were of the character of our marechal-de-camp. Bungener, in 
his " Voltaire et son Temps," illustrates the confusion into which 
men's ideas had got upon the subject of things spiritual and 
things temporal, by noticing the aff'air of the Chevalier de la 
Barre, in 1*766. Amid the accusations brought against him was 
one, according to which it was laid to ^his charge that he had 
recited in public a certain filthy ode. He was condemned to be 
broken on the wheel, on charges of irreligion, of which this was 
one. But the part of the question that must have made Astrsea 
weep througb the bandage with which poets have bound her 
eyes, was this, namely, that the author of the obscene ode 
objected to, Piron, was then in the reception of a pension from 
the court ; and this pension had been procured for him by Mon- 
tesquieu, by way of compensation for his having lost his seat at 
the Academy, in consequence of his having been the author of 



468 TABLE TRAn^S. 

tWs yery ode. This confusion of rewards and penalties was 
enough to make Justice dash her brains out with her own scales. 
Piron would have been in no wise troubled by such a catastrophe ; 
the pension from the court enabled him to keep a joyous table, 
and that was enough for him. 

Duclos was a contemporary and a co-disciple with Piron, in the 
temple of philosophy. In 1766, he was at Rome, where he gave 
such charming little suppers, that the Sacred College gratefully 
extended to him the privileged permission of reading improper 
books ! The philosophers were then in possession of considerable 
influence. Marmontel, who was one of them, was sent to the Bas- 
tille, on a certain Friday, in the year 1760. Soon after his arri- 
val, he was supplied with an excellent dinner maigre^ the which 
he ate without thinking of complaining. His servant was just on 
the point of addressing himself to the scanty remains, when lo ! 
an admirable but somewhat irreligious repast, of meat and other 
things which come under the denomination of gras^ and are there- 
fore forbidden on fast days, was brought in. The unorthodox 
banquet was intended for Marmontel ; the more lenten fare was 
intended for his servant. For in those days, although philoso- 
phers were sent to prison, their appetites were left to their hereti- 
cal freedom. 

This liberty was allowed by the state, but it was neither sanc- 
tioned nor practised by the Church. The authority of the latter 
was great previous to the Revolution. There was then a clerical 
police, which looked into the dishes as well as the consciences of 
the people — of all degrees. I have somewhere read of a body of 
this police coming in collision, during Lent, with the officers of 
the household of the Prince of Conti, who were conveying through 
the streets, from a neighboring rotisseur's to the ducal palace, a 
supper, through the covers of which there penetrated an odor 
which savoured strongly of something succulent and sinful, of 
gravy and gravity. Thereupon the archbishop's alguazils bade 
the prince's men stand and deliver. The followers of the house 
pf Conti drew their swords in defence of their rights and sauces. 



suppeb/ 469 

Much of tlie latter on the side of Conti, and a little malapert 
blood on both sides, was spilt, to the edification of the standers 
by. Finally, the transgressors of the Church law were dragged 
to prison. The damaged repast remained on the pave, for the 
benefit of poor souls who assumed ecclesiastical license to devour 
it without fear of damnation ; and the servants of Conti were left 
in damp cells to meditate at their leisure upon the argument 
which Dean Swift at another period had thus cast into verse : — 

" Who can declare, with common sense, 
That bacon fried gives God offence ? 
Or that a herring hath the charm 
Almighty vengeance to disarm? 
Wrapt up in Majesty divine, 
Doth He regard on what we dine ?" 

To pass from cooks and church to courtesy and coachmen, I 
may here speak of a certain Girard who was known in Paris, 
during the Terror, for his love of what he called liberty and good 
living. In his early days he was a very independent coachman, 
and was just on the point of concluding an engagement with an 
aristocratic old countess, when he remarked — "Before I finally 
close with madame, I should like to be informed for whom 
madame's horses are to make way in the streets." " For every 
one," said the countess. " On questions of precedence, I am not 
difficult ; if it is yielded to me, I take it ; if not, I wait." " In 
that ease," said the aristocratic John, " I shall not suit, madame, 
as I myself never draw aside except for the princes of the blood !" 
Kow this great personage in livery was no other than the Girard 
who became, in 1793, the "public accuser," and who sent to the 
scafi'old those- same nobles who had not been sufficiently noble for 
him in IVSO. 

Upon the matter of what became nobility, however, there was 
always much confusion in the " aristocratic idea " of the highest 
continental families.' Thus who, in contemplating the famous 
Princess des Ursins, seated among the most honoured at the table 
of the King of Spain, would dream of her writing the following 



4:70 TABLE TEAITS. 

sentence in one of her letters to Madame de Maintenon ? " It is 
I who have the honour of taking from his majesty his rohe de 
chamhre, when he gets into bed ; and I am there to give it to him 
again, with his slippers, when he rises in the morning." 

The flattery paid to royalty in France was never more prodi- 
gally offered than at the period when " wit and philosophy " were 
beginning to undermine the throne. We have an instance of this 
in what happened when the queen of Louis XV. arrived, in 1*765, 
at Ferte-sous-Jouarre, where she intended to sup and sleep. She 
was met beneath an avenue of trees, outside the town, by the 
authorities, who offered to her, according to custom, bread and 
wine. The queen took a portion of the bread, broke it in two, 
and ate thereof, as well as of some grapes, sipping also the wine ; 
to the dJilight and edification of the admiring multitude. The 
authorities were so struck by the act of condescension on the part 
of the royal personage, that they made record of the fact in the 
register of the town council. And this they did in such terms as 
to cause a commentator to remark, that they could hardly have 
said more, had her majesty been a genuine goddess. 

After all, this sort of homage had fallen off, in 1765, fi^om what 
it had been two centuries before. When Louis XIL encountered 
his bride, Mary of England, outside Abbeville, he clapped his 
feeble hands, and wished the devil might seize him (and he did 
die soon after) if she were not more beautiful than report had 
painted her ! At the gates of Abbeville, the ill-assorted pair were 
met by the bishop of Amiens and the municipal magistrates, to 
welcome them to the evening banquet ere they betook themselves 
to repose. The bishop presented the new Queen of France with 
a piece of the Real Cross. " The mayeurs offered a gift, the na- 
ture of which brings it within my subject. The gift was usual 
whenever king and queen appeared at the portals of the old 
monkish city. It consisted of three tuns of wine, three fat oxen, 
and fifteen quarters of oats, three pecks of which were presented 
to the astonished lady on bended knee, and in a measure painted 
light blue, and covered with golden fleur-de-lys. A compliment- 



SUPPER. 4:71 

axy address to the king crowned all. " Sire," said the chief local 
magistrate, "you may now conclude your marriage in this our 
good city, without any fear of committing sin thereby ; for, in the 
year 1409 were reformed, as abuses, those synodal statutes by 
which men in our city were forbidden to live with their wives, 
during three whole mortal days after the wedding !" The mon- 
arch entered and sat down with his consort to a repast which ren- 
dered both ill for more than double the period just mentioned. 
Louis had well-nigh died, like La Matrie, the infidel philosopher 
at Berlin, of an indigestion. Had he done so, it might have been 
said of him, as the infidel Prussian king said of La Matrie : " He 
was a gourmand^ but he died like a philosopher ; let us have no 
more anxiety about him." 

Frederick himself loved philosophy more than faith, and philo- 
sophical though profligate kings, more than he did " Most Chris- 
tian " or " Most Catholic " monarchs. He was wont, therefore, to 
laugh at the story of the famished beggar who, standing near the 
statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, solicited charity of a friend 
of Voltaire who was passing by. " In the name of God," said the 
mendicant. The student of philosophy was deaf. " In the name 
of the Holy Virgin !" — " In the name of the saints !" The appeal 
was unheeded. " In the name of Henri IV !" exclaimed the peti- 
tioner; and forthwith the Voltairean put his hand in his pocket, 
giving a crown-piece, in the name of a philosophical profligate, 
while he refused a sou when asked for in the name of God. But, 
as Frederic used to say, " How divine is philosophy !" In his 
mouth the exclamation was like the well-known cry of Marcel, 
the ecstatic dancing-master : " Que de choses dans un minuet !" 

There is a story told in connexion with this same great Frederic 
which is a good table trait in its w^ay. Joachim von Ziethen was 
one of the bravest of the generals who stood by Frederic the 
Great in victory or defeat. He was the son of a poor gentleman, 
and had little education save what he could pick up in barracks, 
camps, and battle fields, in all of which he figured in early youth. 
If his head was not over-ballasted with learning, his heart was 



4:72 TABLE TRAITS. 

well freighted with that love for God, of which some portion, as 
the dismissed lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in King's College 
tells us, is in almost every individual without exception, and forms 
the sheet-anchor which shall enable him to ride through the storms 
which keep him from his desired haven of rest. He became the 
terror of the foes of Prussia ; but among his comrades, he was 
known only as " good father Ziethen." He was remarkable for 
his swiftness at once of resolve and execution, and in remembrance 
as well as illustration thereof, a sudden surprise is spoken of by 
an astonished Prussian as " falling on one like Ziethen from an 
ambush." 

Now, old Ziethen, after the triumph achieved in the Seven 
Years' War, was always a welcome guest at the table of Frederic 
the Second. His place was ever by the side of the royal master 
whose cause he had more than once saved from ruin ; and he only 
sat lower at table when there happened to be present some foreign 
royal mediocrity, illustriously obscure. On one occasion, he 
received a command to dine with the king on Good Friday. 
Ziethen sent a messenger to his sovereign, stating that it was 
impossible for him to wait on his majesty, inasmuch as that he 
made a point of never omitting to take sacrament on that day, 
and of always spending the subsequent portion of the day in pri- 
vate meditation. 

A week elapsed before the scrupulous old soldier was again 
invited to the -royal dinner-table. At length he appeared in his 
old place, and merry were the guests, the king himself setting an 
example of uproarious hilarity. The fun was running fast and 
furious, — it was at its very loudest, when Frederic, turning to 
Ziethen, smacked him familiarly on the back, and exclaimed, 
" Well, grave old Ziethen 1 how did the supper of Good Friday 
agree with your sanctimonious stomach? Have you properly 
digested the veritable body and blood ?" At this blasphemy, and 
amid the thunders of pealing laughter, the saluting artillery of 
the delighted guests, Ziethen leaped to his feet, and after shaking 
his grey hairs with indignation, and silencing the revellers with a 



suppEK. 473 

cry, as thougli they had been dogs, he turned to the godless mas- 
ter of the realm, and said — words, if not precisely these, certainly 
and exactly to this effect : — 

" I shun no danger ; — your majesty knows it. My life has been 
always ready for sacrifice, when my country and the throne 
required it. What I was, that I am ; and my head I would place 
on the block this moment, if the striking of it off could purchase 
happiness for my king. But there is One who is greater than I, 
or any one here ; and He is a greater sovereign than you who 
mock Him here from the throne in Berlin. He it is whose pre- 
cious blood was shed for the salvation of all mankind. On Him, 
that Holy One, my faith reposes : He is my consoler in life, my 
hope in presence of death ; and I will not suffer His name to be 
derided and attacked where I am by, and have voice to protest 
against it. Sir, if your soldiers had not been firm in this faith, 
they would not have gained victories for you. If you mock this 
faith, and jeer at those who cling to it, you only lend a hand to 
bury yourself and the state in ruin." After a pause he added, 
looking the while on the mute king : — " AVhat I have spoken is 
God's truth ; receive it graciously." 

Frederic was the patron of Voltaire, who had dared to say at 
his own table that what it had taken God and the twelve Apostles 
to build up, one man (Voltaire) would destroy. But Frederic was 
now, for the moment, more deeply moved by what had been 
uttered by the unphilosophical Ziethen than by anything that had 
ever fallen from the brilliant but irreligious Voltaire. He rose, 
flung his left arm over Ziethen's shoulder, offered his right hand 
to the brave old Christian general, and exclaimed: — "Ziethen, 
you are a happy man ! Would that I could be like you ! Hold 
fast by your faith ; and I will respect even where I cannot believe. 
What has occurred shall never happen again." 

A deep and solemn silence followed, and the dinner was spoiled, 
according to the guests, to whom the king gave the signal to dis- 
perse long before their appetites had been satisfied. Ziethen was 
preparing to withdraw with the rest, but Frederic, taking him by 



474 TABLE TEATTS. 

the hand, whispered : — " You, my friend, come with me to my 
cabinet." 

This anecdote was told by Bishop von Eylert to Frederic Wil- 
liam III. That king, who had never heard of the incident, pro- 
nounced on it a three-piled eulogium of " excellent, pleasing, and 
instructive," adding thereto a natural desire to know what passed 
between the king and Ziethen in the cabinet. It were doubtless 
well worth knowing, but I have sought for any notice of it, and 
all in vain. The good bishop, as he deserved, was invited to 
remain at Sans Souci, to supper. " I excused myself," says the 
prelate, in his memoir of the king, " as having only a common 
upper coat on." The king replied, smilingly, " I know very well 
that you have got a collar and a dress-coat ; you are the same 
in either. I want you^ not your coat ; so, go in." 

The Prussian soldiers, in the days of the great Frederic, used 
to be allowed unlimited liberty in providing themselves with food 
in an enemy's country. The like permission, but somewhat 
enlarged, was given to the Croat soldiers, under the name of for- 
aging for " supper ;" but in that permission they included every 
meal. They are as ready at it as Abyssinians ; they cut a slice 
out of the first beast they fall in with, salt it, put it in between 
the saddle and the horse's back, gallop till it gets warm, and then 
eat it with Croat appetite. The sportsmen of Dauphiny eat bec- 
caficoes after much the same fashion ; they pluck the bird, sprinkle 
it with pepper and salt, carry it on their hat to dry in the air, and 
eat it with relish for supper, without any further cooking. They 
declare it is far better so than when roasted. 

Celebrated as the " petits soupers " of the French were during 
the last century, they were equalled in brilliancy, and perhaps, 
surpassed in popularity, by those given in Paris by the Duchess of 
Kingston. The adventures of that very adventurous lady rendered 
her a favourite with our lively neighbours. When a rustic Devon- 
shire beauty — wayward, capricious, ignorant, and seductive, Eliza- 
berth Chudleigh was suddenly transplanted to the court of the 
Princess of Wales, as maid of honour. She there captivated the 



SUPPER. 475 

youthful Duke of Hamilton, returned his affections, and accepted 
the offer of his hand. They loved intensely, quarrelled furiously 
and were reconciled warmly ; the enemies of both toiled inces- 
santly to prevent the marriage, and each was daily told of the 
alleged infidelities of the other. One of these srtories excited the 
ardent beauty to such a rage that she dismissed her ducal lover, and 
in the whirlwind of her wrath gave her hand to Captain Hervey, 
brother of the Earl of Bristol. She married in haste, and repented 
quite as hastily. She hated her husband before they left the church 
together ; and after six months of the most active domestic warfare, 
the ill-sorted pair separated by mutual consent. She went abroad 
to fttid solace for her disappointment, and was heartily welcomed 
at the courts of St. Petersburg, Prussia, and Saxony ; she was the 
favoured guest of Catherine IT., and of the great Frederic, at 
Berlin ; and no electoral banquet took place at Dresden without 
being enlivened by her presence and her wit. When she accepted 
the invitation to resume her place at the English court, the recep- 
tion she met with was enthusiastic : she played whist with the 
men, and she drove four-in-hand as if she had been the born 
daughter of a charioteer, brought up to her father's business. 
Her accomplishments won the heart of the simplest of dukes and 
the gentlest of men, his grace of Kingston, and as an ecclesiastical 
court, in 1769, pronounced her marriage with Captain Hervey 
(now Earl of Bristol) null and void, she speedily espoused her 
ducal admirer, while her former husband bestowed an earl's 
coronet on a second wife. The duke's property was not entailed, 
and the duchess spent it with such reckless prodigality, that his 
grace was fairly frightened into consumption and death ; and in 
1773 she was a beautiful widow, with a large remnant of the 
duke's fortune in her possession — as long as she did not marry 
again. Away she went to Rome, sailed up the Tiber in her own 
yacht, entertained the pope (Ganganelli) Clement XIV. at break- 
fast, dinner, and supper, and kept up such a state that the world 
had never beheld such extravagant splendour since the days of 
the most profuse and profligate of queens : the heirs of the duke, 



476 TABLE TEAITS. 

seeing their inheritance fast melting away, instituted against her 
the famous suit for bigamy, on the ground that the ecclesiastical 
court which broke her first marriage had no power to do so. To 
meet her accusers she hurried to England, where she considerably 
startled the modest among our grandmothers by her Sunday 
amusements, and the daily display afforded by the very lowest of 
dresses. But as she gave most splendid dinners she had no lack 
of friends, and few men could find it in their hearts to abandon a 
woman in distress, whose kitchen fires were never extinguished, 
who gave her guests green peas at Christmas, and whose com- 
monest beverage was imperial tokay. The House of Lords 
judged her case, heard her defence, and pronounced her second 
marriage bigamy, by overthrowing the decree ^i the ecclesiastical 
court with regard to her first union. To avoid the vulgar penalty 
she immediately fled, crossed the Channel in a storm, and proceeded 
to Munich, where she was royally entertained, especially as the law 
could not touch the property bequeathed her by the Duke of 
Kingston. The courtesy title of duchess was still allowed her, 
and the Elector of Bavaria added to it that of Countess of Warth. 
Great nobles gave entertainments in her honour, which lasted for 
days, and ended with a ball, a banquet, and, instead of common- 
place fireworks, the storming of a town at midnight. Poor nobles 
vied with each other for her smiles and the life-interest of her 
possessions ; but as she had once been nearly entrapped by a Greek 
Prince Warta, who turned out to be the son of an ass-driver in 
Trebizond, and who committed suicide in prison, she made and 
kept her resolution to be her own mistress for the future, and not 
that of either count or kaiser. 

In France, where she ultimately resided, she purchased the 
estate of St. Assize au Porte, which had formerly belonged to the 
Duke of Orleans, the father of "Egalite." She paid down a 
million and a half of francs for it, and sold seven thousand francs' 
worth of rabbits from it, during the first week of her residence 
there. A fricassee of the duchess's rabbits was, for a long time, 
the chief dish at all the guingueties round Paris. Her own great 



suppEB. 477 

suppers were famous for their refinement and luxury. She was a 
lover of good living, a gourmet rather than a gourmande ; an 
epicure of taste, but not a glutton ; and the gastronomic art never 
could boast of a more liberable patronage than that she bestowed 
upon it, especially in her Paris residence, where her table, her wit, 
her dinners, and her diamonds, made of her, for a time, the most 
remarkable personage in the capital. She died suddenly, of the 
rupture of a blood-vessel, in 1*788, and was completely forgotten 
before that year had also expired. 

I have mentioned that our eccentric country-woman had 
purchased the property of the Duke of Orleans ; and that reminds 
me how fatal the table, and particularly the supper-table, has been 
to the dukes of that house. Thus Philippe, the brother of Louis 
XIV., quarrelled with the latter touching the marriage which the 
king cashed to conclude between one of his own natural daughters 
and the duke's son. Orleans, fevered and flushed, went to sup 
" with the ladies of St. Cloud." He had not long before eaten 
heavily and drunk deeply at dinner ; and at this second meal he 
was fatally stricken with apoplexy. The king said he was sorry, 
and having thus far given way to his grief, he sat down with 
Madame de Maintenon to rehearse the overture of an opera. 
This duke's son and successor gave suppers, at which his infamous 
daughter, the Duchess de Berri, presided, and admission to which 
was purchased by the candidate making simple denial of his belief 
in a God ! The fate of both had something retributive in it. The 
Duchess de Berri, who had privately married a profligate and ugly 
officer of her guards, named De Riou, sought to overcome her 
father's wrathful refusal to acknowledge the union, by giving him 
a spleudid supper al fresco on the terrace of Meudon, on the 13th 
May, 1709. The evening proved cold and damp, and the duchess 
caught there a fever brought on by a chill, over feeding, and deep 
drinking, of which she died. Fourteen years afterwards, the sire 
vfho, at sixteen, had all the experience in vice of a man of sixty, 
was dining with the Duchess of Phalaria, his last mistress, when he 
was taken ill. The physician who was summoned enjoined absti- 



478 TABLE TKATTS. 

nence immediate and complete. " "Wait till to-morrow," said tlie 
duke, "I will enjoy myself to-night." And accordingly, the 
exemplary pair supped together, and the lady was in the act of 
telling the duke one of her lively stories. As she went on, the 
glass slid from his hand, and his head sank upon her shoulder. 
She thought he was asleep, and went on her story; but he to 
whom she was telling it was stone-dead. The son of the regent 
duke was in every respect unlike his father. He ate his last 
supper with the Jansenist fathers of the Genevieve — symbol of 
his general habits and the society he kept. His son was the 
father of Egalite^ and at the time of his death (1785) was popular 
with the lower classes at Paris for the nightly suppers which he 
distributed to them, and which consisted of bread and wine, with 
medicine for those who needed it. It was a distribution made not 
charitably, but politically. Of the last meal of Egalite, before he 
went to execution, I only know that it was a breakfast, and not a 
supper, and that he both ate and drank heartily. Misfortune quite 
as little disturbed the appetite of the Louis Philippe of our own 
days. During his flight from Paris he never forgot the hour of 
supper or dinner ; and when " William Smith " landed at New- 
haven, the first thing he asked for was — something to eat. I 
notice these table traits, simply because the Orleanist historians 
always speak contemptuously of Louis XVI. eating, with appetite, 
in open court during his trial. The stomach of Orleans was ever 
as ready as that of Bourbon. 

The supper has been called the conversational meal, but to 
make it so in perfection it requires a thorough professor of the 
science of conversation — one who knows that its very spirit con- 
sists less in being a good talker himself than in flinging about 
suggestive matter to induce others to converse upon. The host 
who understands the science will so do this that his guests will be 
satisfied with themselves. Some French writer has said, in 
reference to this after-supper gossip, that it should be like a game 
at cards, at which each player does his best, — but I do not endorse 
this sentiment to its fullest extent, although I allow that there is 



STJPPER. 479 

something in it. Tlie wise generally, and dyspeptics especially, 
will do well to avoid political subjects after supper ; and perhaps 
there is no more comprehensive remark to be made on this matter 
than one advanced by a follower of La Bruyere, a minor moralist, 
who has said that " la confiance fournit plus a la conversation que 
I'esprit ou I'erudition." 

I recollect once seeing the dullest of evenings made suddenly 
bright by an apt query modestly put by one who needed not to 
inquire, but who quietly asked if any one present could name the 
author of the line : — 

"Fine by degrees., and beautifully less," 

Many a wide guess was fired off prior to the successful naming. 
The general opinion was in favour of Pope, and Pope has indeed 
written a line very like it : — 

" Fine by defect, and delicately weak." 

The falhng upon such coincidences are the very explosives of after- 
supper discussions : thus, the very familar line — 

" Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm," 

may be the text for a pretty dispute. It occurs in Addison's 
" Campaign," and also in Pope's " Dunciad." The latter poet too 
has said — 

" Ye little stars, hide your diminish'd rays 5" 

but Milton, before him, had written — 

" At whose sight all the stars 
Hide their diminish'd heads." 

Schiller's "Thekla" warbles melodiously her melancholy assur- 
ance — 

" Ich habe gelebt und geliebet ;" 

and Byron's " Sardanapalus," equally used up, mutters with a 
faint sigh the same words — 

*' I have lived and loved." 



480 TABLE TRAITS. 

"We all know wlio tells us that 

" Gospel light first beam'd from Boleyn's eyes 5" 

and Horace Walpole harped on the same tune, when he said — 

" From Catherine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread, 
And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed." 

Gray and Moss, too, afford instances of like coincidences of sound 
or sentiment, or both. The first, in his " Elegy," has — 

'' And leaves the world to darkness and to me.'' 
The second, in his " Beggar's Petition," sings to the same air — 

" And left the world to wretchedness and me," 
I have noticed, in a former page, how Gray's line of 

" Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes," 

must necessarily remind one of Shakespeare's words, in the mouth 
of Brutus — 

" Dear as the drops that visit this sad heart." 

Demosthenes has truly said — 

'Av?)p 6 ^evyuv koI ttuTiiv ixaxvoETai, 

SO that Sir John Minnes is not even the original author of the 

Hudibrastically sounding assertion — 

" He who fights and runs away, 
May live to fight another day." 

The lines in Hudibras are as the perfecting and comment on the 
above, remarking as they do — 

" For he that runs may fight again, 
Which he can never do that's slain." 

These coincidences are, no doubt, unintentional. For my own part, 
I do not believe that Shakespeare, when he spoke in Hamlet, of 

" The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne 
No traveller returns," 



SUPPEE. 481 

necessarily had in his mind the 

" Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum 
lUuc unde negant redire quemquam," 

of CatuUiis ; although the latter lines were quoted by Seneca the 
philosojDher, and were as familiar as household words among the 
verse-loving ancients. Dr. Johnson's remark on the similarity 
between Caliban's desire to sleep again, and the irdXtv TJdeXov 
KadevSetv of Anacreon, may apply to nearly all the passages in 
our national poet which appear to have been derived from the 
ancients. If we judged them by any other rule than that the 
ideas presented themselves naturally to Shakespeare's mind, with- 
out consideration whether any one before him had sung to the 
self-same tune, we might soon turn his, and indeed any poet's 
works, into a thing of shreds and patches. For instance, again, 
when the young Dane describes Osric as " spacious in the possess- 
ion of dirt," we might accuse the author, yet wrongfully, perhaps, 
of having stolen the idea from the "multa dives tellure" of 
Horace. We might imagine that the " Id in summa fortuna sequius 
quod validius," of Tacitus, gave birth to 

" That in the captain's but a choleric word, 
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy," 

of Shakespeare, who would have been very much surprised had he 
been told as much. Again, Corneille, because he said, 

" Qui commence Men ne fait rien s'il n'achev^e," 

is not to be accused of having written a pendant to the assertion 
of Flaccus — 

" Dimidium facti qui coepit habet." 

N'either has Beaumarchais rifled Otway, because " Desirer du bien 
a une femme est ce vouloir du mal a son mari," has a close resem- 
blance to — 

" I hope a man may wish his friend's wife well, 
And no harm done.'' 
21 



482 TABLE TEAITS. 

If mere close resemblance establish a charge of plagiarism, then 
Chaucer, when in speaking of maidens dark or fair he said — 

*' Blake or white, I toke no kepe," 

stole the thought from the ancient Irish bard, who said — 

" Bohumileen a coolen dhuv no baun ;" 

a line which Chaucer could not have read, though his own is a 
literal translation of it. Examples like these I might go on citing 
ad infinitum. As Rosalind says, " I could quote you so eight 
years together, dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted." 
But I will conclude with one more case in point between a well- 
known English author and the French dramatist Moliere. Thus 
writes the one — > 

" What woful stuff this madrigal would be, 
In some starved, hackney' d sonneteer, or me I 
But let a lord once own the happy lines, 
How the wit brightens and the style refines !'' 

And thus sung the other — 

" Tous les discours sont des sottises, 
Partout, d'un homme sans eclat. 
Ce seraient paroles exquises. 
Si o'etait un grand qui parla." 

If this be digressing, it is because after-supper conversation does 
take a discursive character. In the last century, in Paris, the 
majestic nonentities were invited to dinner ; the talkers, be they 
who they might, to supper. "La Robe dine; Finance soupe," 
was another of these distinctions ; and it was found that the sup- 
per was by far the most agreeable meal of the day. The Duchess 
of Kingston, as I have said, was especially celebrated for her Paris 
suppers. They were infinitely more splendid than her English 
breakfasts, so pleasantly sneered at by Horace Walpole. The wits 
assembled round her in gay clusters, and they and the poets cud- 



SUPPER. 483 

gelled their brains to prove one another plagiarists; while the 
peers stood by, and marvelled at the extent and elasticity of the 
human understanding. IJ^Tothing could well surpass the hilarity 
and magnificence of these entertainments, where the philosophers 
were voted as dull as the nobles, and no aristocracy was acknow- 
ledged but the aristocracy of intellect. Another lady, remarkable 
for the elegance of the little suppers over which she presided, was 
Madame Tronchin : but the Reign of Terror came on, and her 
friends and relatives were daily dragged from her to the guillo- 
tine ; and Madame Tronchin, who had a most feeling heart, used 
to say, that she never could have gone through such horrors had 
it not been for her little eup of cafe a la creme. The courtiers 
used to joke in like fashion, at the suppers of Versailles, at national 
disgrace. When the Count d'Artois returned from the siege of 
Gibraltar, to which he had gone with much boasting, and began 
to talk of his batteries, the courtiers used to smile, and to whisper 
to one another that he meant his " batterie de cuisine." 

With regard to the dietetics of supper, it may be taken for 
gTanted that late, heavy meals are dangerous, and to be avoided. 
Chymification and sleep may go on tolerably together after it; 
but when the time comes for chylification and sanguification, 
feverish wakefulness will accompany the process. Dyspeptic 
patients, however, are authorized to take a light supper before 
going to bed. It is said that the idle man is the devil's man ; and 
it may also be said of the stomach, that if it has nothing to do it 
will be doing mischief. It is especially so with persons of weak 
digestion ; for whom an egg^ lightly boiled, or dry toast and a 
little white-wine negus, is a supper selon Vordinance. But a wise 
man will hardly want a guide in this matter. Breakfast may be 
the meal of friendship; dinner, of etiquette; and supper, the 
feast of wit ; — but, generally speaking, he will show most wit who 
takes the least supper. Common sense should teach him the 
exact measure of his capacity. 

A whale swollows at a gulp more shrimps than would be 
required to make sauce for the universe. That gentle songster, 



4-84 TABLE TEAITS. 

the canary, is like the celebrated contralto songstress, who eats 
daily half a peck of saffron salad ; — the bird consumes nearly his 
own bulk weight of food. But he is delicate compared with the 
caterpillar, which consumes five hundred times its own weight 
before it lies down, to rise a butterfly. As for the hysena, he is 
popularly said, when hungry, and other food not presenting itself, 
to eat himself; and probably, like Dr. Kitchener, he carries his 
own sauce-box about him ! But the stomach of man is not made 
to perform such feats as those accomplished by the whale, the 
canary, or the caterpillar. He is especially to remember, that 
though an animal, he is not a beast. 

Man, it must be remembered, began with refinement. He was 
made perfect, upright, and to him was given " every herb bearing 
seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree in 
which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for 
meat." Here food is used as a symbol of celestial blessings ; as 
in the passage, " He should have fed them also with the finest 
of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock should I have 
satisfied them." With the fall, civilization and innocence also fell, 
and barbarism was the offspring of disobedience. There was a 
time when men had sunk so low that they were like the Troglo- 
dytes described by Pomponius Mela — " Troglodytse nullarum 
opum domini, strident magis quam loquuntur, specus subeunt, 
alunturque serpentibus " — they had no property, shrieked rather 
than spoke, lived in caves, and devoured serpents for food. The 
fine wheat and the honey from the rock was not theirs. The 
Fenns, painted by Tacitus, were only a shade less barbarous : 
"Mira feritas," says the graphic Caius Cornelius, "foeda paupertas; 
non arma, non equi, non penates; victui herba, vestui pelles, 
cubili humus " — wonderful for their wildness, their poverty filthy ; 
they had neither horses, nor gods ; the grass was their food, skins 
their raiment, and the ground their couch. The Helvetii were 
progressistas in the race for the prize of civilization ; and, when 
planning an emigration project, they took two years to thoroughly 
perfect the plan, laying up stores of provisions the while. Whoever 



SUPPER. 485 

Ceres may have really been, it is clear tliat in her is to be recognized 
the benefactress of mankind: — 

" Prima Ceres unco glebam dimovit aratro, 
Prima dedit fruges, alimentaque mitia terris, 
Prima dedit leges 5" 

she who taught them the uses of the plough, of agriculture, and 
of fixed laws, and who gave them what God had intended for 
civilized and innocent man, "the finest wheat," — she must have 
been the renovator of the earth, and of beauty upon it. Man, 
like the rudest saints of the desert — so near may savagery be to 
undisciplined sanctity — had been " feeding on ashes ;" but now the 
finest wheat was again there to give him strength and delight, — 
wheat, where golden grain had, perhaps, first yielded its 
abundance beneath the shade of the primeval tree of knowledge. 

The era of wheat, of the ploughshare, and of iron, was the era of 
the second civilization. Man was no longer generally a wild 
savage, or a cunning hunter. God again vouchsafed to him "the 
finest of the wheat;" and, as civilization progressed, so also was 
widened the circle of supply, upon which indeed mucU of civilization 



The subject of "Man and his Food," with regard to the future, 
has been ably discussed by Dr. Leonard Withington, of ISTewbury, 
Massachusetts. He has moved the question, whether we have 
reached the terminus of all our stores or not? He holds, that the 
forest, the field, the river, and the sea may yield contributions to 
our table, in addition to the known abundance for which our as 
abundant gratitude is now due. We have not reached the line of 
our last inventions ; and, doubtless, new articles are to be discovered, 
which will have an equal influence on virtue and happiness. 
"Boundless nature," says Dr. Withington, "lies before us, and 
undeveloped skill is wrapt up in the human breast. The exuberance 
of our system is not exhausted,- — her beasts, her birds, her fishes, 
her plants, her growing trees and her copious grasses, her pastures, 
her valleys, her lofty mountains, and her rolling streams, are all 



486 TABLE TEAITS. 

spread out to the hungry world. Nature is an image of God, and 
she echoes, though she does not originate the words, 'In my 
Father's house is bread enough* and to spare.' 'Thou visitest the 
earth, and waterest it; thou greatly enri chest it with the river of 
of God, which is full of water ; thou preparedst them corn when 
thou hadst so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof 
abundantly ; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft 
with showers ; thou blessest the springing thereof.' " 

Dr. Gumming holds, not only that death is the most unnatural 
of conditions, but that when the era of heavenly, everlasting life 
shall be established, the heaven of man will be here upon earth. 
So Doctor Withington thinks that the earth will not only be made 
more heavenly beautiful than it now is, before the period of the new 
paradise, but more abundant also. "The manna," he says, "which 
is hereafter to be provided, will not be rained down from heaven, 
but will spring up from the earth." And there is common sense in 
this last assertion, for in it is implied that abundance will come by 
the proper application of knowledge and labour, without which 
the earth, ever wise and prudent, will yield but little. The 
increasing populations of that earth have two objects before them 
which are of no small importance, and which are thus defined by 
Dr. Withington: — "One is, to impart from the open field of 
nature all those good and wholesome things which our Father 
has laid up for us ; and secondly, to train our taste and habits for 
the using of those things which are nutritive and sweet, and 
which may have the best influence on our moral character and 
social happiness." The training should begin from early child- 
hood, — and early childhood requires delicate training. 

An American writer on dietetics is half afraid that people will 
smile if he, in connexion with the subject, introduces dainty 
children; and yet, as he justly remarks, "there is a mystery 
about this subject, on which we may well bestow a passing 
thought." There are children in all the various classes of life 
who are "very difiicult about their food." "These little connois- 
seurs," says Dr. Withington, "cannot eat with the rest of the 



suppEE. 487 

family, and the motlier and the son are often at issue in an inter- 
minable controversy. The mother often says it is all whim and 
caprice; and some severe matrons tell their children that they 
shall not eat a morsel until the given lump is devoured. But the 
son would say, if he could quote Shakespeare, 'You cram these 
things into mine ear against the stomach of my sense. I know I 
don't love it. I can't eat it; it is not fit to be eaten.'" The 
doctor proceeds to inquire if this turn of the appetite be a matter 
of caprice or necessity. He examines whether the mother, or the 
boy be right. He acknowledges the antiquity of a controversy 
which has been carried on for ages, and he has no doubt "that 
Eve had it with Cain and Abel, the first supper she gave them 
after they were weaned. We ofier it," he adds, "as a profound 
conjecture, that Cain was a dainty boy, and probably doubled up 
his fist at his mother." With regard to the controversy itself, he 
appears to think that it has much of the quality of that which 
marked the dispute about the colour of the chameleon, and that 
"both parties are partly wrong." It is likely, as he remarks, that 
much depends on the training, and volition, and also on original 
nature and temperament. " There are some things we were never 
made for, and they were never made for us. There are some kinds 
of food which, though they may suit the race, were never made for 
the individual. But this blinded appetite, partly natural, partly 
artificial, follows through life." And this is leaving the controversy 
very much where the worthy doctor found it. 

Finally, let them who fancy that man was made merely to enjoy, 
learn truth from contemplating the portrait of one whose sole 
philosophy was gastronomic enjoyment. If ever there was a man 
who had a gay celebrity, and who taught in the porch, that life 
was only life at the tables in the " salon," it was the editor of the 
Almanach des Gourmands." He taught not that hihere est vivere, 
but that bibere was only the half of vivere, and that to live was 
emphatically to eat and drink. He was a practical philosopher, 
it should be observed, and here is the portrait of the man at the 
end of his philosophical practice : — " The author of the Almanack 



488 TABLE TKAITS. 

is still in the land of tlie living. He eats, digests, and sleeps, in 
the cliarming valley of Longpons. . . . But how is he changed ! 
At eight o'clock, he rings for his servants, scolds them, cries 
Extravagantes ! calls for his soupe aux Jicules^ and swallows it. 
Digestion now commences : the labour of the stomach reacts upon 
the brain, the gloomy ideas of the fasting man disappear, calm- 
ness resumes her sway, he no longer wishes to die. He speaks, 
converses tranquilly, asks for Paris news, and inquires for the old 
gourmands still living. When digestion is finished, he becomes 
silent, and sleeps for some hours. On awaking, complaints recom- 
mence ; he weeps, he sighs, he becomes angry, he wishes to die, 
he calls eagerly for death. The hour for dinner comes ; he sits 
himself down to table, dinner is served, he eats abundantly of 
every dish, although he says he has no want of anything, as his 
last hour is approaching. At dessert, his face becomes animated; 
his eyes, sunk in their orbits, sparkle brightly * How is Marquis de 
Coussy, dear doctor V he exclaims : ' how long will he last ? They 
say he has a terrible disease. Doubtless they have not put him on 
regimen. You would never have suffered that, for one must eat 
to live, — ah !' At length, he rises from table. Behold him in an 
immense arm-chair. He crosses his legs, supports his stumps upon 
his knees (for he has no hands, but something resembling the flap 
of a goose), and continues his conversation, which always runs on 
eating. ' The rains have been abundant,' he cries, ' we shall have 
plenty of mushrooms this autumn. What a pity, dear doctor, 
that I cannot accompany you in your walks to St. Genevieve ! 
How fine our vines are ! what a delicious perfume !' And then 
he falls asleep, and dreams of what he will eat on the following 
day!" 

Fancy, if the theory of guardian angels be a beautiful truth, 
what the winged watcher of this animal, staggering over the 
supper of life, must feel at contemplating the ward committed to 
his care. For our own profit such examples may be employed, as 
the ancients showed their slaves drunk in presence of their sons, 
that the latter might be disgusted with inebriety. And this tail- 



suppEE. 489 

piece should be engraved at the end of every work professing to 
teach that there is even in this world, a paradise for gourmands. 
The old heathen Socrates knew better, when he said, "Beware of 
such food as persuades a man, though he be not hungry, to eat ; 
and those liquors that will prevail with a man to drink them when 
he is not thirsty." In the same spirit, the pious Dodsley taught, 
that health sat on the brow of him only who had temperance for 
a companion — temperance, which Sir William Temple styled as 
" that virtue without pride and fortune without envy, which gives 
health of body and tranquillity of mind, the best guardian of 
youth, and support of old age." So Jeremy Collier says, " Tem- 
perance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes 
them seize the object with more keenness and satisfection. It 
appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person ; it gives 
you the command of your head, secures your health, and preserves 
you in a condition for business." What comment can I add to 
texts of such philosophy, but to bid wise men welcome to the 
feast of reason, where 

" May good digestion wait on appetite, 
And health on both?" 



21* 



314-77 -li- 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



